by Cecilia Tan
Kyle wondered if Alex were inside the building. “Could this be about the supposed siren?”
“More likely a thief...” Kate said, but she put her hand over her mouth.
Oh, jeez, Alex, have you really put your foot in it this time? Kyle wondered. If Alex had tried to steal a book or something, would he be expelled?
“Oh my God.” Marigold pointed.
Dean Bell was emerging from the front doors, carrying someone. From this distance Kyle could easily make out two things, Alex’s jacket, and blood. A lot of blood. Bell’s hair was loose, and the ends of the long blond strands were matted with blood. Master Brandish emerged a few seconds later, wild-eyed, her sword still in her hand. She pointed the tip at the ground then, taking the hilt in two hands and driving it down into the stone of the top step. A loud cracking sound was heard, then she pulled it free, only to shake her head at whatever it was she saw.
Bell reached the bottom of the stairs just as the man who had to be the Master of Nummus House arrived, much out of breath. He was a dark-haired man with a mustache and ponytail. What was his name? Zoltar or something. Kyle discovered both girls were squeezing his hands tight.
Did magical people pray? Kyle wasn’t really sure. He didn’t care. Let him be all right. Please, don’t let him die.
The Nummus House Master knelt at Alex’s head the way Kyle had seen Jess do the night Nichols had gotten hurt in the broom race. He placed a coin on Alex’s forehead, then his palm over that. The line of fire disappeared, leaving blue spots in Kyle’s vision as he tried to see what was happening. The other masters had knelt on either side of Alex’s body and had joined hands over him.
Surely if Jess could fix up Nichols, these really powerful magic users will have no problem fixing up Alex. Kyle wasn’t even aware he was speaking out loud. “Please be okay, please be okay.”
A few minutes passed and no one moved. Finally, Alex did, a kind of spasm. But that was apparently good, as the assembled let go of each other’s hands. Ms. Finch got to her feet and came over to them. Behind her, Kyle could see two EMTs were running a gurney down the walkway.
“He’s going to live,” Ms. Finch said, and her eyes were hollow and her skin drawn.
“Was it...the siren?” Marigold asked in a timorous voice.
“We don’t yet know what it was,” Ms. Finch said. “But I’d suggest you stay indoors tonight. I’ve never heard of a siren attacking someone like this—if indeed those rumors are true, and I don’t believe that they are. Perhaps Mr. Kimble will be able to tell us more when he regains consciousness.”
Master Brandish came over to them then. “I’ll walk you back to your houses. Master Finch’s advice is sound. You are not to go out of doors until sunrise at least.”
They remained silent under her watchful gaze, Kyle just saying a subdued goodbye to the girls at Scipionis House and then accompanying the Master to Gladius House.
“I thought maybe he was going to try to pull an all-nighter,” Kyle said. “He’s working on some project and really having trouble. So he got himself locked in the library.”
“And got more than he bargained for,” Brandish said. “Fool.”
“Master, if I may ask, what was that you did with sticking the sword into the ground?”
She seemed to become aware of the fact she was still carrying the thing. “Oh, that. Trying a little divination to see where the culprit went. But all it did was point the direction he or she went, which is fairly useless information.”
“You think it was a person?”
“It’s more likely a person than an actual monster, but as you’ll learn if you start on the bestiary, the line between person and monster in the magical world is not very clearly drawn.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask about that...”
“Have you?” The doors of Gladius House were in sight now.
“Yes, um, and I don’t mean to be impertinent by the question but...is Dean Bell a vampire?”
Her laughter was immediate and hearty. “Ah, dear Wadsworth. The answer, which I’m sure you’re sick of hearing but is nonetheless true, is yes and no. Come and eat something with me quickly and I’ll try to explain, if you like.”
“Um, all right.”
So it was that Kyle learned how to unlock the kitchens—a key on a chain around the Master’s neck—and came to be eating cold roast beef on rye on a prep table in the back while Master Brandish explained some things like what a blood mage was and devoured a not inconsiderable amount of food herself. She couldn’t linger long, though, heading out to meet back up with the others and continue the search, while deputizing Kyle to spread the word throughout the house that no one was to go out.
As it was, the only other person still in residence was Remy, who was in his room. Kyle could hear the sounds of hammering through the door. Kyle knocked when there seemed to be a lull.
Remy pulled the door open a crack. “Wordsworth?”
“Um, Wadsworth,” Kyle said automatically. “Master Brandish said to tell you no one is allowed out of doors tonight.”
“Why? Something to do with why the bell was ringing?”
“Yeah. There was an attack, they don’t know what did it.”
“Attack?”
“A student in the library. Um, very bloody.”
Remy’s eyes were wide with incredulity. “You saw it?”
“Not the attack, just Dean Bell carrying the student. Master Brandish ran into the library with the sword...”
“You saw the Sword of Gladius?”
“Um, yeah...”
“Wow.”
And a cup, a wand, and a coin, Kyle realized. “Anyway, she said don’t go anywhere. It might still be dangerous, since the attacker hasn’t been caught.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Remy shut the door.
Kyle climbed the rest of the way up to his own room. First he text-messaged everyone he knew about what had happened. Then he took out his journal and wrote a poem:
When the great invasion storms the shore
Teeth bared, terrible might at the ready
The first to bleed are never the soldiers
Trained to live and die in defense of the land
But the innocent who have the ill luck
To be in the wrong place at the wrong time
“A storm is coming,” he said to no one in particular. Then his phone rang. It was Jess. He picked it up and told her what he had seen. It would be far from the last time he’d tell the story that night.
December
It took Kyle two days of trying before he finally pieced together which hospital Alex was in, since no one would tell him outright. All he knew was that he was still unconscious. It took another half day to figure out the best way into the ward at Mt. Auburn. Alex was in intensive care, and was being kept separate from the other patients. Kyle wondered if something went wrong magically, would it mitigate the damage?
That was what he began to think after he had sneaked into the room, only to be forced to hide behind a curtain almost immediately as two people with familiar voices came striding into the room mid-argument. Dean Bell and Master Brandish.
“You can’t ignore the fact that both of our attempts to track the culprit have failed,” Brandish was saying.
“There is a difference between failure to track and there being nothing to track, Callendra. I have been over every inch of that library and found nothing. That was true the night before the attack and that was true the night of the attack as well.” Kyle could hear cloth rustling. Bell was apparently either checking something on Alex or treating him somehow.
“Are you sure you did the entire building?”
“My dear, wielding the power of the dean’s office allows me to speak to the buildings in ways you cannot. I do not believe we have a siren haunting the library.”
“And in our midst, Quilian?”
“May not be a siren at all, but something else entirely.”
“You are the most infuriating man.”
/>
“So you’ve said.”
They went back out of the room. Kyle hurried out, only taking a moment to squeeze Alex’s hand, which was clammy and cold. It wouldn’t do to get caught there by those two.
* * * *
When Alex didn’t regain consciousness after a week, Veritas arranged for him to be transferred to their own facility, Faiella House, a small Victorian house on a side street near the Radcliffe Quad, a bit of a hike from Kyle’s room, especially in the rain and sleet that arrived with the month, but still more accessible to Kyle than the hospital had been.
He and Jess went together the first time, and Jess introduced him to a few of her professors, whose offices and laboratories were in the building as well. Alex’s room seemed more like a guest room at a bed-and-breakfast than a medical room, but Kyle supposed that made sense. There wasn’t anything wrong with him physically now. He’d have some scars across his chest and belly where the creature had gored him, but those wounds seemed to have little to do with why he didn’t wake up.
They sat by his bedside, talking to him as if he were awake. But after a while Kyle just couldn’t keep it up any more.
He looked at Jess. “You couldn’t do for him what you did for Nichols that night? He had a head injury.”
Jess squeezed Kyle’s hand. “If his problem was a physical one in his head, maybe I could. But it doesn’t seem like that. It’s more like his mind’s in retreat. Gone into hiding.”
“Why would a siren attack him?” Kyle had read everything he could about sirens in the past week.
“We don’t know it was actually a siren. No one’s dared come forward to say they actually spent the night in the library and met the siren, so that might just be a story.”
“Then what?”
“Something got loose? Someone’s unauthorized familiar?” Jess guessed.
“Did it have to be a creature? Couldn’t it have just been a student?”
“Who would attack Alex?”
“Not everyone likes him.” Frost. Had Frost already left the campus that night? “Or maybe it was a drug addict or homeless person who had been sleeping there and attacked when they were discovered?”
“They’d have to be magical to get into the building. The library is one of the more heavily secured buildings against accidental incursion.” Jess frowned. “There can’t have been that many people left. That should narrow the suspects.”
“I think Frost was gone already, but there are a couple of Glads who don’t seem to like Alex much. Kate and Marigold were with me. Michael was around that night though, and so was Monica...” He looked at her suddenly, an idea forming in his head, but then Alex seemed to stir. “Alex? Are you trying to tell us something about Monica?”
Alex moaned wordlessly, then lapsed into an inert slump again.
Kyle looked back at Jess. “He told me Monica had a thing for him for a while. That she’d been kind of...inappropriate about it and he’d felt weird and told her no.”
Jess frowned. “I don’t think Monica’s a siren.”
“Well, how would you know?”
“A siren needs to have sex, for one thing, and she never ever asks me to leave the room for her the way she does for us.”
Kyle’s leg bobbed impatiently. “But if the campus siren is stalking guys in the library, then she wouldn’t need her roommate to vacate the room, would she? And she has all these nights where she’s gone until dawn. What would one or two more be? No one would notice...”
Jess’s black eyes widened, then she shook her head. “I still don’t think so. I would have noticed something by now.”
“But they appear completely human except when feeding. And if it was her, and he refused her when she was hungry, she might have attacked him...”
Jess still looked skeptical. “Presumably the reason Alex was in the library was either to study all night, or because he actually hoped to meet the siren, since the legend is that after guys feed it, they pass their exams or whatever...”
“And he was worried he was going to fail! He told me so himself!”
Jess let out a long breath. “You need some evidence that isn’t circumstantial.”
“Is there a way to prove if someone is a siren or not?” Kyle racked his brains. “Like a blood test or something?”
Now she made a face. “You are not going to convince Dean Bell to test every student here for human-ness. Way too many of us have magical blood from non-human ancestors to want to open that can of worms.”
Now Kyle just stared at her. “What do you mean, non-human ancestors?”
“Well, like the siren, for example. They mated with humans all the time back in the days of Homer. Magical biology is not the same as regular biology, Kyle. Alex here has almost certainly got fey roots somewhere back in his family tree.”
“And what’s Frost? Part naiad or something?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Just, he’s so pale, and his hair’s so black, and his eyes are so blue, he doesn’t look real sometimes.” Kyle had no idea what kind of creature he might be, though.
Jess shrugged. “I think he just needs to get out in the sun. Not that that’s happening any time soon.” She peered at the window, which was showing pitch darkness, even though it was only just past five. “Come on, we better get back.”
“All right.” Kyle stood and then a new thought occurred to him. “What about Bell himself?”
“What about him? You know he can’t actually be part vampire, right? That’s just a joke...” She trailed off as Kyle brushed Alex’s shaggy hair back off his neck and showed a bruise there, faded and yellow from the intervening week, but still quite visible.
“I overheard him in the hospital say he had been checking the library, and he was definitely hiding something from Master Brandish when they were talking. I could just tell!” he insisted.
“Oh, you are amazing. First you were convinced it was Monica, now you think Dean Bell attacked Alex? Give it a rest, Kyle.”
* * * *
After that, Kyle began researching how to detect a siren. After all, if he could prove Monica wasn’t one, that would make it easier on everyone. And he couldn’t really go after the dean, could he? He felt like he had to do something. He was registered to take a magical biology class the following semester and had no trouble getting access to those books as “preparation.” He should have been studying for his upcoming exams, which were only two weeks away, but every trip to the library produced as much research about sirens as it did on poets and soothsaying and alchemy.
He devoured information, much of which he couldn’t really quite digest without learning more, but he eventually did work out a few things. Like that sirens and sphinxes were related, and that there was a kind of charm or amulet that could be made that would make a sphinx tell the truth. If what Kyle read was true, it would work on any “mantic creature,” sirens included.
But making it would be no small feat. It required alchemical preparation beyond what he’d done in his class, a ritual aspect he knew nothing about, and had to be completed at the correct phase of the moon. Final exams had to come first. He was going to be staying on campus during the January break; he’d have to come up with a way to make the amulet then.
* * * *
Kyle took to studying by Alex’s bedside at Faiella House. He knew Alex’s suitemates were making visits but he didn’t get the impression any of them stayed long. Everyone was getting stressed over exams. Kyle kept thinking Alex would have been the one to keep everyone loose, make sure everyone had at least a little fun and didn’t crack under the pressure, but unfortunately that wouldn’t be happening this time around.
“Okay,” he said to the unconscious form next to him, the night before his Alchemy exam, “you’re really not pulling your weight here, dude. I could use some help with this business about Five Element Theory. How is wood an element? I still don’t get that.”
Nothing but silence from Alex’s quarter, of course.
Still no answer, but it was like now that Kyle had started talking, he couldn’t stop. “What is up with that, anyway? Is that why he looks so washed out all the time, squandering his magic on shit like that? Or was he always such a wan little waif? I swear, that’s the only reason he’s as high in the pecking order as he is. Showing off his magic whenever he gets a chance.
“Not that I actually give a flying fig about where I am in the Gladius pecking order. But it’d be nice to be able to at least feel like I belong on the same level with Jess and you. Did I tell you I got the go-ahead for this masque thing? Here’s the funny part. I had to go and recruit people to be on the committee, right? So I went around and Caitlyn Speyer decided she wanted to make sure it happened, and she ended up recruiting a bunch of other girls, none of whom trusts me not to fuck things up, so...basically I don’t have to do anything now. Technically I’m in charge but we’ve had one committee meeting, I said two words, Caitlyn said the rest, and it’s clear they aren’t going to let me do anything except be a figurehead.
“Which is kind of good since it frees me up to work on my plan to start courting Jess. If there’s one thing the Gladius House library is good for, it’s books on manners and customs. I know I can’t just...get down on one knee and ask her to marry me. I know I’ll just get laughed out of the hall if I try that. But I could give her one of the traditional courting tokens, you know? Show her I’m serious. And serious that I want her to give me a real chance. Oh, what am I saying? It’s either going to work or not. She’s either going to suddenly realize I’m her dream come true after all, or it’s all going to crash and burn worse than the Hindenburg.”
