Magic University Book One: The Siren and the Sword

by Cecilia Tan

  Kyle shook his head. “No. But I’m really starting to worry about this not having an aptitude thing.”

  Jess patted his arm. “You’ve only been here a month, and you’re cramming a million new things into your head. Give it time. No one is about to revoke your Magician’s License.”

  “Li—?”

  “She’s kidding,” Alex said pointedly. “I have something much more important to talk about.”

  “Which is?” asked Jess and Kyle at the same time.

  “The Halloween Ball. What are you going to go as? I’m fresh out of ideas.”

  Jess shrugged. “Go to the costume place over by MIT and see if you like anything.”

  “Wait, are we supposed to dress up for this?” Kyle asked.

  They both looked at him like he had just spoken ancient Aramaic. “It’s Halloween, of course you’re supposed to dress up,” Alex said.

  “But I would have thought that’s mostly for...for the mundanes, right? Is all the stuff about the veil between worlds being thin really true, or is that just another story?”

  “It is true,” Jess said. “That’s why you dress up. So if there’s a ghost trying to haunt you, they won’t find you.”

  “So...ghosts are real?” Kyle’s voice was tentative this time.

  “Of course ghosts are real,” Jess said, annoyed.

  “Well, how am I supposed to know?” Kyle got to his feet. “Ghost, zombies, werewolves, vampires...how the hell am I supposed to know the difference?”

  He stomped off to the make-your-own-sundae bar, and immersed himself for several minutes in constructing a rather large thing with bananas around the edge, and chocolate and caramel sauce drizzled just so, and whipped cream, and jimmies.

  When he got back to the table neither of them had moved. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be so...cranky.” He thought of Master Brandish as he said that.

  Maybe he’d feel better after the ice cream.

  Jess’s black eyes were fixed on him. “It’s all right,” she finally said. “It’s just...it’s hard for us to get used to how...um...clueless you are.”

  “Tactful, Jess, real tactful,” Alex said with an amused air.

  “Well, it’s true! It’s not like it’s Kyle’s fault he doesn’t know anything, though. It’s got to be like going to college in another country where you don’t even speak the language or something. Or you only speak the textbook version. We’ll try to explain more and make fewer assumptions, Kyle. Won’t we, Alex?”

  Alex shrugged. “I’m not the one he yelled at.”

  “Who’s yelling at who?” Randall sat down next to Alex. “Hey, Kyle. Got your text. Are they really getting you down over at Gladius House?”

  Kyle groaned. “It’s all formal manners and sitting in the pecking order over there. I can’t believe I ended up there.” He smacked his forehead. “If only I’d cut the cards! I would have gotten something else. But I was nervous, you know? I just kind of fumbled with the cards and took the one on top.”

  Jess stole a spoonful of his ice cream. “Well, no cut at all is still a kind of cut,” she said. “And even if you had cut the cards, you still had a one in four chance of what you got being a sword, too, Kyle.”

  “But I don’t feel like I belong there. I thought the whole point of the choosing was to get put where you belong?”

  Alex took up a spoon and started stealing from Kyle’s mountain of ice cream, too. “Well, the choosing doesn’t always put you where you’d be happiest. And it sounds to me like you don’t feel much like you belong anywhere right now.”

  “Well, that’s true...”

  “And who knows? Maybe fate has a reason for you to be there, Kyle.” Randall looked around as he said this, as if worried about who might overhear. “Sometimes it takes time to see the design.”

  Alex ribbed him. “I thought you didn’t believe in Soothsaying.”

  Randall drew himself up. “I never said that! I just don’t believe I have any particular ability for it. Which my mother refuses to believe, but, well.” He shrugged and began to placidly salt his food.

  Randall had told Kyle during Alchemy last week that he was the first one in his family to attend Veritas. He came from a long line of voodoo practitioners in Trinidad, who all expected him to become the greatest Soothsayer of them all. He still hadn’t told his mother he was planning to major in Alchemy, but he had a feeling she knew anyway, given the scolding tone of her recent letters and the number of luck talismans she had been sending.

  A few more Camella folks came to sit with them after that. Kyle recognized Yoshi, a Japanese transfer student who hung around with them a lot and who seemed to have learned English from rap albums, and it looked like Jeanie and Lindy had brought Ciara, the Irish girl from poetry class.

  Alex looked down the length of the table and then back at Kyle. “You feeling a little less lonely now, Ace?”

  Kyle had to grin. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “All right, so back to my original question. What are we going to wear for the Halloween Ball?”

  * * * *

  Kyle waited until Saturday night to try to talk to Jess about a lot of the things he had going through his head. They went to see a movie being shown on campus, but halfway through she squeezed his hand, they looked at each other, and he just knew they both wanted to go. So they left without saying a word, walking hand in hand past the cathedral-like edifice of Memorial Hall. Alex had taken him inside once just to see where the non-magical freshmen ate. “Like something right out of Oxford and Cambridge, isn’t it?” he’d said. “The Ivy League had a real hard-on back in the days of the colonies to try to look and act as old as the old British colleges.”

  Now, as they made their way past it, Kyle said nothing, just gave Jess’s hand another squeeze. They walked without a particular goal in mind, crossing the overpass by the firehouse into Harvard Yard, then out the other side into Harvard Square, bustling with Saturday night crowds enjoying the weather. The real winter cold would descend soon enough, or so everyone told him.

  They ended up sitting on a bench in a small park not far from the Spanish restaurant where they’d eaten on Kyle’s first day. A guy was playing guitar nearby, and from time to time someone on a skateboard would rattle past.

  Kyle finally spoke when the song ended and the busker paused to chat with some passersby about his CD. “So, we’re going to this ball, together, right? I mean, like you and me, together, not everyone in Camella 3 West.”

  Jess still hadn’t let go of his hand and squeezed it gently. “If that’s what you want.”

  “Of course it’s what I want.” He tried to tease out what could possibly be confusing about that, and yet it felt like there was a tangle. “Um, isn’t it what you want?”

  “I didn’t want to presume,” she said, eyes wide. “I mean, it’s not like we’re courting, right?”

  “Courting?”

  “You know what I mean. We’re not dating so we can get engaged so we can get married.” She cocked her head. “Are we?”

  “I thought we were going to wait and see what happens.” He felt like his voice got higher, but maybe it was just his heart sped up.

  “Oh, yes.” She put her other hand over their joined ones. “I guess what I’m trying to say, Kyle, is I didn’t assume you wanted to go together like that. It’s really sweet, though, that you assumed I would.”

  He felt like he was still missing something in what she was saying, a feeling that was all too familiar. The feeling that blanketed his days. All he could do, though, was forge ahead. “There’s no one else for me, Jess. And I don’t want there to be. I want it to be you and me, for as long as we both enjoy it. You and me...you know, like a couple.”

  Her smile was warm and open. “Okay. I didn’t want to push you, what with you just getting settled here and all. I didn’t assume that just because I was the first girl you met at Veritas, that I would be the only one you liked.”

  He laughed at that. “I was just
lucky you were the first girl I met, because I would have been crazy about you anyway. Being in the right place at the right time, I got to know you immediately.” He breathed a little easier and shifted to put an arm around her shoulders. “The rest, as they say, is history.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She leaned her head against his shoulder with a happy sound, and he felt a wash of warm joy all the way down to his toes. The guy with the guitar began to play again.

  “Maybe we should go to the ball as Zorro and...is there a female character in Zorro? I was trying to think of something Spanish,” he said. He was actually trying to think of a character in a mask. What if this ball was Jess’s dream come true? Wouldn’t that be something?

  She chuckled. “It’d be easy enough for me to go as generic señorita. But I’m not sure I’d want to. But you’re right. We have to think of something or Alex will talk me, Lindy, and Jeanie into going as Charlie’s Angels or something stupid like that.”

  “What about superheroes? Everyone could do whatever one they want, but then at least we’d sort of match.”

  “Who would you pick?”

  “Hmm, good question. Batman would be kind of cool. You could totally do Wonder Woman if you wanted.”

  “Or Catwoman,” she said with a sly tone in her voice. “Me-owww.”

  Something about the way her voice dropped when she said “meow” sent his pulse throbbing through him. “Um, do you think we should head back?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

  Her hand slid along the seam of his jeans at his inner thigh. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said in a singsong. “It’s such a nice night...” Then her hand reached his zipper and she massaged him with the heel of her palm.

  He pressed his lips to her hair, taking a slow breath of her scent. “It’s a shame Brandish won’t allow us to have visitors in our rooms.” Well, visitors of the opposite sex. Kyle had run into Frost kissing his boyfriend in the stairwell plenty of times on their way to Frost’s bed. “I have the place all to myself, after all.”

  Her wandering hand now made its way under his shirt and up his stomach. “My room’s fine,” she said. “Monica won’t be back until late Sunday night or Monday morning.”

  Where does she go on the weekends, anyway? Kyle would have asked, but one of Jess’s fingernails had found one of his nipples and that was apparently the off switch on his ability to speak.

  “I wish I could carry you there right now,” he said, when she let up. “Just pick you up and poof, be there in the blink of an eye.”

  She nuzzled under his chin. “That’d be more magical power than either of us have, you know. And when we got there, we’d be too tired to do anything.”

  “Guess we’ll have to walk, then.”

  She nibbled for a moment on his earlobe before getting to her feet.

  * * * *

  Once the door was closed behind them, Kyle bent her into a kiss, a real kiss. They never did this in public, tongues seeking each other and neither of them able to hold back the hungry noises they made. It thrilled Kyle suddenly to realize they’d kissed like this enough times now that he could no longer keep count of them.

  They had gotten good at undressing while kissing. Kyle had taken to always wearing shirts with buttons since they didn’t have to be pulled over his head and he couldn’t help but notice that she often did the same. He freed her shoulders of her shirt and undid the clasp of her bra in front, his thumbs finding her nipples before the bra could fall away. It felt like as the two nubs came to full hardness they sent an instant message to his cock to do the same.

  He felt her hands slide over his ass as she eased his jeans down, then quite suddenly he was bereft of her as she broke the kiss and seemed to disappear. He opened his eyes to find she had dropped to her knees to bring his underwear all the way to his ankles, and then she stayed down there, looking up at him and cupping his balls with one hand.

  She licked her lips and he was reminded of the cat noise she’d made before, the association even stronger as she began licking his erection like a cat grooming its paw. Her eyes closed as she did it, but he stared, soaking in every moment of the incredible image. When she closed her lips over the head and then gently sucked the entire thing in deeper, he nearly fell over.

  “I don’t...think my knees are going to hold out,” he said, trying to catch his breath.

  She pulled off his cock with a wet pop. “Bed, then.” She shooed him over to it and he sat, then la down at her urging gestures. She shed the rest of her clothes, her panties and a pair of socks, and crawled over him, settling down so her belly slid against his saliva-slick cock. She ground upward, her hips undulating slowly, until he moaned, then she moved down between his legs to take him in her mouth again.

  She had convinced him quite thoroughly that for purposes of Esoteric Studies, virginity was too significant to be given up just for the sake of recreational enjoyment. There were strict definitions of what losing one’s virginity meant. Oral sex was apparently okay. So was rubbing your genitals against your partner until you came, or letting them rub you with their fingers.

  Kyle had always let Jess lead their lovemaking since she knew the rules, and also since she had a bit more experience; she knew what she wanted and what to try. Not that he didn’t think up things, but she seemed happy and eager to lead, so he figured he’d hold his ideas in reserve in case Jess was ever at a loss for what to do next. Some of the time what he thought of, she would think of herself soon after, which just proved to him, as their comfortable silence and their mutual moment of “let’s go” had, that they were a perfect match for each other.

  She climbed back up to lie next to him in the narrow bed when his legs began to shake like his orgasm was imminent. He turned to kiss her mouth, her lips so full and red from the friction against his cock, the flavor salty like sweat. She guided his hand to her mound and he let his fingers part her lips, seeking out first her slippery juices and smearing them upward over her clit, the way she had taught him to that first night together.

  He held her spread and flicked his middle finger lightly over the slick nub until her hips began to jerk, when he knew he could apply more pressure. In a matter of just a few minutes, she had trapped his hand between her thighs and was jerking hard in the throes of her orgasm. He had also learned not to pull away or to stop sawing at her clit until she said to, since sometimes a second and a third orgasm followed hot on the heels of the first.

  At last she opened those obsidian black eyes and looked at him through a haze of lust. “Come here,” she said, shifting more onto her back and pulling him so that he was on top of her. She trapped his cock in the sticky crux of her legs, so very close to the forbidden place that his breath caught and his arms trembled as he held himself up.

  “Like that,” she said, pulling at his buttocks, until his hips were a little closer to her head than her own, angling his cock over her clit and into the grip of her thighs.

  “Isn’t this dangerous?” he asked, voice rough with lust.

  “I trust you, Kyle.” She craned her neck upward to place a kiss on his chin. “If you want to be sure, when you get really close, pull up and rub off against my hip or stomach, okay?”

  “Okay.” This wasn’t just about magic, but about potential pregnancy, wasn’t it? He was pretty sure they’d said in ninth-grade sex ed class that it wasn’t a good idea to ejaculate anywhere near the vagina. Better safe than sorry.

  He began to thrust into the wet warmth between her thighs and they both moaned. And real sex supposedly felt even better than this? At the moment, he couldn’t believe that.

  He nearly lost it when she began to come again, and gripped onto his cock the way she always did his hand, but he managed to hold back until she let go, and he just got his cock pressed against her stomach when hot come spurted out of him.

  “Merlin and Morgana’s goat-fucking third cousin,” he said, choosing one of Alex’s more colorful swears for the occasion. “You are in-fucking-credible.”

 
She laughed and pulled him down for a kiss. “Now you’re starting to sound like one of us.”

  “Good.” He settled next to her so he wouldn’t crush her and realized he felt content for the first time in days. “You’re amazing. You’re everything I could dream.” The words I love you hovered behind his teeth, too, but he held onto them. He wanted to wait to say them when he knew he really meant them, not when he was giddy from sex and would say almost anything.

  “You’re amazing, too, Kyle,” she said, reaching behind her pillow for a towel. She wiped them both up and then tossed the towel aside, pulling up a blanket instead. “You’re not going anywhere for a while?”

  “Not unless you want to kick me out.”

  “Uh-uh.” She pulled him close and they fell asleep like that, arms entwined.

  * * * *

  Upon hearing that Jess and Kyle were going to go to the ball as Batman and Catwoman, Alex declared that he would not go as Robin the Boy Wonder and that it was now Kyle’s job to help him find something. Thus it was that on Saturday, Kyle found himself on the T with his friend, riding to Kendall Square. They emerged on the edge of the MIT campus and then walked several blocks, passing office towers for biotech and research companies until they came to a squat little brick warehouse.

  “The Garment District?” Kyle read off the sign, hand-painted on the brick.

  Alex led Kyle through a narrow door into the store.

  Kyle stopped and took in the view a few steps into the place. The ground floor had a costume shop off to one side, and what looked like the world’s largest laundry pile on the other. Several people, mostly women, were climbing carefully through the pile, examining the clothes one piece at a time.

  Alex shrugged in that direction. “They sell all that stuff by the pound. Dollar-fifty a pound, I think? Upstairs is the biggest secondhand clothing store I’ve ever seen. But this is what we want.” He led Kyle into the costume area. One whole wall section was covered with wigs. Several fancy costumes hung from hangers on pegs: a pirate, a space alien, a Kiss-like rock-and-roll outfit.