Magic University Book One: The Siren and the Sword

by Cecilia Tan

Oh. And cat ears. “Jess?”

  “Rrrrrow,” she said as she came close, running one fingernail under Kyle’s chin. “Shall we go in?”

  “Sure.” He followed her, turning back to give a half-hearted wave to the other two. They were giggling as they waved back.

  Inside the hall, colorful lights had been set along the walls, painting them in gold and purple and green and blue, and from time to time the colors changed with the music. All the dining tables had been removed, leaving a large open floor with a deejay at one end. Kyle didn’t recognize the song playing, but it had a nice beat to it and Jess pulled him right out onto the dance floor. There were already a few dozen people dancing while others stood around the edges watching, or walked back and forth between the various snack and drink stations set up in the corners.

  But Kyle only took that in at the edges of his vision. Jess filled his sight, and he wanted nothing more than to just run his hands down the sleek gloss of her hair, over the skintight curves of her outfit, pulling her against him.

  Instead, they danced, which was dizzying and made his blood rush nearly as much. She came close enough sometimes for him to catch her scent, but she wasn’t touching him. He felt the edge of his cape swishing along the backs of his legs and wondered what she would say if he picked her up and tried to carry her. Although Camella House was probably too far for that.

  Those were the sorts of thoughts that ran through his head, and just as he was beginning to wonder how much time had passed, and whether maybe they ought to pause to get drinks, the music slowed.

  He didn’t hesitate, pulling her close as the slow dance began. She sighed contentedly as she leaned her head against his, nearly his height in her tall boots. Kyle was anything but content, but his instincts were soothed for the moment. Closer was better than not closer, after all. He lost himself in the scent of her shampoo, and decided when the song ended, he’d ask if she wanted to get some air.

  His reverie was broken by someone tapping on his shoulder, and a voice, “May I cut in?”

  “Um, sure...” he said automatically, before he realized who it was.

  But a moment later Frost was in his arms, his wrists crossed behind Kyle’s head. “Frost, what...?” He looked up and saw Candlin was dancing with Jess, who had to look down at him from her high heels.

  Frost leaned close. “It’s nearly half past nine, you know? Don’t be late.”

  Then just as suddenly, his arms were empty and Frost was making his way toward the exit. The music changed, picking up pace, and Jess was chuckling as Candlin bowed to her and left her, too.

  She seized Kyle’s hand as she pushed him toward the edge of the dancing. “So,” she said, once they were a bit further from the deejay and the speakers. “Are we going to the broom race?”

  “Um, what?”

  “Michael said Frost invited us to go.”

  “Oh.” Kyle blinked. “Er, yeah. Roof of William James Hall, ten o’clock. Do you want to go?”

  She grinned. “I’ve never been! It’s usually only the Gladius types who get to go.”

  So Frost wasn’t calling him out for a duel or trying to hit on him or any of the other quick mental explanations Kyle had come up with for the secret rendezvous. Or not so secret, as it turned out. “Wait a minute. They actually race brooms?” Kyle asked, his curiosity getting the better of his usual instinct to just play along and try to fit in.

  “So I hear. Come on.” She led the way out of the hall, drawing a few appreciative whistles from some of their compatriots.

  Kyle followed, starting to wonder if he really should have brought a coat. The roof of the tallest building on the campus was not likely to be a warm and cozy place. Maybe they could stop at Gladius House and he could pick one up? But, no. He couldn’t see himself complaining in front of her. So he kept his mouth shut as they crossed the campus, the clouds shredding like gossamer to reveal a gibbous moon a third of the way up the sky.

  * * * *

  He wasn’t surprised to find a door to the building “conveniently” unlocked, nor another one leading to the roof stairwell.

  He was surprised to see Alex, squatting on the gravel roof with two guys Kyle didn’t recognize, passing a pipe back and forth between them. Alex was in his pirate outfit, though he’d lost his headscarf somewhere along the way, and a parrot—a real, live parrot—was pecking at the gravel near his boots.

  About twenty other students were there, and Kyle found himself looking for Frost among them. The shadows were strange and disorienting, the light coming from two corners of the roof. He couldn’t tell if it was always like that, or if the students had rigged the lights. Jess held his hand, which was the only warm part of him up here in the wind. She pulled him closer to the edge and they looked down on Memorial Hall in all its cathedral glory. He put his arms around her as if to warm her up, and wondered if his shivering was too obvious.

  “I wonder if someone brought...aha. Come on.” She pulled him closer to a small knot of people where a Gladius House tutor, Remy, was passing out tiny glass vials from his messenger bag. Jess went and got two, bringing them back to Kyle.

  “What is it?” He held it up in the light and saw it was a deep red color like wine.

  Jess had already downed hers. “You’ll be warm once you drink it.”

  “Will you tell me what it is if I drink it?”

  She giggled as he pulled the cork and drank, then answered, “It’s magic.”

  It was. He felt the warmth start in his stomach and blossom outward, almost like getting goosebumps, except it was heat that flashed over his skin when it reached there. The palms of his hands were suddenly hot.

  “They call it Red Heat. If you end up going any further in Alchemy, you might learn to make it,” she said, watching his stunned expression. Then she slid into his arms. For a moment he thought it might feel too hot to be in such close contact—but no, after the initial flash, the effect seemed to mellow to a steady warmth that felt even better when they were holding each other.

  Remy whistled and the crowd quieted down. He was a stout upperclassman, his sandy hair overgrown like he’d just not gotten around to trimming it, and he was wearing a blue jacket with the Gladius House crest on the breast pocket. Now Kyle could see Frost, standing next to Remy and holding what looked like a broom he’d just pulled from a closet somewhere in one hand. Behind him stood three others with brooms, two guys and a girl. Kyle recognized them all as upperclassmen in Gladius House.

  The ones with brooms were all dressed in dark clothing, and Kyle wondered how they were supposed to be able to see them against the dark sky, even with the moon as it was. His answer came soon enough. One by one, each of them took something from Remy that looked like an Olympic medal and put it over their heads. Then they each began to glow: Frost, blue; the one he recognized as Caitlyn Speyer, red; and the other two, green and yellow. The reflected light made Candlin’s glasses look opaque.

  Weren’t they just fighting? Kyle thought. Whatever had caused Candlin to storm out of the dining hall seemed to be done with now, anyway.

  The racers lined up on the edge of the roof, facing Harvard Yard. Alex and some of the others hoisted a tall pole into the air, atop which flew a strip of white ribbon. “Round one!” Remy declared. “Around the steeple of Memorial Church and back. First one to grab the ribbon is the winner!” He rang a bell and Kyle’s heart jumped into his throat as all four racers dove from the ledge, dropping out of sight. It was only a fraction of a second, though, before four streaking comets shot upward toward the white spire they could clearly see from this vantage point. They had been fairly closely bunched, but somehow during the turn around the steeple, Speyer and the green racer had gotten entangled, and Frost and the other were in the clear lead on the way back.

  They were neck and neck, hands outstretched toward the target, waving in the wind, two blurs of colored light shooting overhead. The whoop of triumph that came down wasn’t Frost’s voice, though.

  That came a few
seconds later. “I’ll get you on the next round, Allan!”

  Allan, Kyle now remembered, was supposedly related to none other than Poe, but he usually tried to block out the dining room gossip and so wasn’t sure whether it was true. All four racers soon made their landings, the other three at high speed, coming to stumbling stops, Frost more slowly and alighting with a few gentle jogging steps.

  They reassembled at the edge. Another ribbon was hoisted, this one either brown or red—Kyle wasn’t sure in the light.

  “Round two!” Remy barked, the wind blowing his hair across his eyes. “All the way to the river! Under the Kennedy Street bridge! And back to grab the ribbon! Marks...go!” He rang the bell again. This time Kyle was prepared for the leap of the racers and saw them wrap their legs around the broom handles before their speed turned them to blurs again.

  When they were out of sight, he whispered to Jess. “So what makes the brooms fly?”

  “It’s a combination of the amulets they are wearing, the conditioning on the brooms, and their own inherent magic,” she said. “The keepers of the brooms are all in Gladius House. You’d have a better chance of finding out exactly how they do it than I would.”

  “What do you mean conditioning?”

  “There are certain kinds of spells you can do, like soaking the wood with the essence of certain flowers, only under the full moon on a cloudless night...that sort of thing. I’m under the impression it takes all year to get the brooms ready...oh, here they come again.”

  Speyer was in the lead this time, and Kyle could hear her laughter as she closed in on the target, grabbing the ribbon and circling them once quickly before the other three arrived.

  “Aren’t they kind of conspicuous? Glowing like that?” Kyle asked, settling his arms around Jess from behind so he could keep whispering into her ear, hold her, and they could both face the racers.

  “Only if you have the Sight,” Jess answered. “And look up at the right time.”

  “Round three!” Remy cleared his throat to quiet the well wishers around Caitlyn, then tried again. “Round three. The distance round! All the way to the tower at Powderhouse Circle, then back to ring the bell on the Swedenborg Chapel, around the spire of the First Church, then back here for the final ribbon!”

  Once again the racers dropped away, this time veering to the right as soon as they were off, and disappearing over the buildings of the law school.

  “Pretty neat, huh?” Alex said.

  Jess startled. “When did you get there?”

  “Just now,” he said with a chuckle. The parrot made an affirmative whistling noise. “Isn’t that right, Corky?” He gave the parrot some kind of nut or seed and the parrot went to work happily on opening it. “Been a long time since I raced a broom.”

  Kyle’s ears perked up. “I really want to try it.”

  Alex shrugged, scanning the sky in the direction the racers had gone. “After the three races, there’s not a lot left, usually, but they will let folks fly around a little until they go dry. You just have to be careful that you aren’t flying over the river or a major street when you run out. The broom will get lower and lower so by the time it does you won’t have far to fall.”

  Kyle nodded, but sighed inwardly. This seemed to be largely a Gladius House tradition, and if it was like other house traditions, Kyle was too far down the pecking order to rate a flight before the brooms would be exhausted. Maybe next year.

  “Here they come!” Jess pointed. A blue comet was in the lead, no sound coming from Frost at all as he struck the bell and reversed direction, Caitlyn only a second or two behind, then Allan. All the ending landmarks were visible from here, and the students crowded along the edge. Frost was nearly at the First Church when the murmuring began. “Where’s Nichols?”

  The fourth racer was not visible yet. Meanwhile in making the next turn, Frost lost a fraction of a second; then it was him and Speyer. Both whipped past overhead so quickly, Kyle could not tell who had won until Frost came fluttering down with the last ribbon, a lovely deep purple shade, entwined in his fingers. He kissed Candlin upon touching down, and draped the ribbon over his shoulders.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, a hand on Candlin’s upper arm.

  “Nichols hasn’t come in,” Remy said. Two students with binoculars were scanning the sky in the direction of Powderhouse Circle.

  “Oh for the love of...” Frost went directly to the edge and leaped, even as Remy reached out a hand to stop him.

  “Crazy-ass maniac!” Remy shouted after him. “Now we’ll probably end up with both of them stranded in Somerville somewhere.”

  “Give him a break, Rem.” Caitlyn took off her amulet and the glow around her faded, darkening her naturally red hair. “If he finds him, the broom’s the quickest way to get him back here.”

  “Or maybe he just didn’t want to give it up.” Remy took her amulet and the broom, then went to collect the others. “What do you...?” Kyle started to ask Alex something, but Alex was not standing where he had been a minute before. He shook his head and asked Jess instead. “Will they be okay, you think?”

  “Yeah, probably,” Jess said. “Nichols probably ran out of gas early for some reason—either his broom just didn’t have enough, or he wasn’t channeling his energy well...”

  “Hey, Kyle!”

  Kyle looked up to see Alex waving to him from the edge of the building with a broom in his hand. “Come here and try this!”

  Kyle and Jess exchanged a look. “Go on,” she said. “You know you want to.”

  He hurried over to Alex who urged him to take the mask and cape off. “We can both go. Stand in front of me and put the broom through our legs like this...” Alex pulled him close with one arm. “Then the amulet’s ribbon needs to go around both our heads.” A student Kyle didn’t know put the amulet on them. “Okay, Ace, you ready for this?”

  “Won’t we weigh twice as much?” Kyle asked, a little nervous.

  “And won’t we have twice the magical power a single person has?” Alex countered.

  “Um, yeah,” Kyle said, but in his head he was thinking, What if I don’t have any magical power after all? What if I’m just one of those Sighted weirdos? What if we fall off this building and die?

  But then there wasn’t any more thinking to be done because Alex jumped them both off the building. Kyle felt his stomach hit the roof of his mouth, but then he opened his eyes because it didn’t feel like they were plummeting to their deaths. It felt like they were soaring.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Alex said, in his ear. “Just keep your knees together.”

  “Okay.” The warming draught they’d taken before was still at work, and where Alex pressed against his back and where his arm held around Kyle’s middle felt almost tingling with heat. The rush of the wind on his face was delightful as they flew over the Yard, right past Kyle’s own window at the top of Gladius House, then turned in a wide arc to head back. Kyle laughed as he realized Alex’s green parrot was flying alongside them.

  “We’ll come in as slow as we can. Let the momentum carry you into a run,” Alex said as they approached the roof. Kyle thought of how Frost had done a little jog.

  Their landing wasn’t perfect, as they tripped each other up a little, and only quick thinking by Alex saved Kyle from being choked by the amulet, but as Kyle ended up falling into Jess’s arms, he counted the maneuver a success. The broom was passed on to someone else.

  “Thanks, Alex.” Kyle realized his heart was still pounding from the adrenaline rush. “That was really something.”

  “No problem, Ace.” Alex whistled and the parrot came back to his shoulder. “You guys heading back to the dance?”

  “I think we had enough dancing,” Jess said, her hand sliding down Kyle’s hip.

  “Ahh. I see. Well, you kids have fun.” Alex gave them a little wave and then headed over to some other students, pulling the pipe from a pocket somewhere and waving it enticingly. From overhead came a joyful laugh, and Kyle look
ed up to see another pair go by on the other broom, waving to them.

  “Do you want to stay and watch more?” Jess asked. “I’m not sure how many more flights there will be.”

  Kyle smiled. “I’ve seen plenty now.”

  They were just heading for the stairwell when a shout went up. “Here they come!”

  The blue glow that was Frost was getting larger and larger, but also seemed dangerously low to the rooftops. The yellow flicker of Nichols was overlapping as if Frost were carrying him. The yellow glow also did not seem very strong compared to earlier. “Oh shit,” Jess said.

  “They’re coming down!”

  Frost and Nichols had just cleared the roof of the physics building and were losing altitude, heading for the circle of grass in the driveway of Memorial Hall. Kyle found himself in the front of the group racing down the stairs, trying to get to them as quickly as possible. Halfway down, he wondered where Jess was. Had she been left behind because of her high heels? He couldn’t stop now, though, or the people racing down behind him would run smack into him.

  They burst out of the doors on the first floor and ran across Kirkland Street, and as Kyle got closer he saw Jess was already there, with Remy and Speyer each of them holding a broom. Jess was kneeling at Nichols’s head, her palms against his temples, her eyes closed. Frost was sitting next to her, looking as pale and drained as ever.

  Jess began to chant in a language Kyle didn’t recognize, as the students formed a circle all the way around them. Only now did Kyle make out a large bruise on Nichols’s forehead, the spot swelling up badly. Jess’s hands moved over his forehead and her chant stopped as she bowed her head. All of them were silent, the hiss of traffic going to and from Oxford Street the only sound.

  Kyle was startled as Jess suddenly threw her hands in the air with a kind of anguished cry, her eyes wide and unseeing. Then she shook herself and came to.

  The swollen spot was gone. There was still some evidence of a bruise, but Nichols’s forehead was smooth again. He opened his eyes. “What in Circe’s tangled loom is going on?”