“But they’re often unreliable, crystal balls,” Cedric adds. He just stares off into the corner over my head, some faraway look on his face.
Kendall moves a little closer to me, and the warmth of both his and Draven’s bodies so close to me makes me almost start to perspire. I don’t want either of them to move away, so instead I start to undo the top buttons of my cardigan. And then I see the way all four of their eyes flicker to my chest as I do so, and I stop. Heat flushes my face again, and this time I’m unable to hide it.
Kendall reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. I catch him looking up at me as he does so, his eyes so large and brown and soft that I could get completely lost in them. I have to clear my throat.
“Um, so this divination. How would I go about, well, learning it?”
Cedric’s eyes return to my face, and I take the opportunity to finish undoing my sweater as quickly as possible. It doesn’t help that my hands are trembling slightly as I do.
“You’d need a strong Psychic Mage to teach you,” Cedric says.
Flynn adds in, “Of which you have two.”
“And you would need an orb,” Cedric finishes. “Most people call them crystal balls. They are pretty hard to come by, but I may be able to pull some strings if I can convince my father it’ll be useful in your preparations for the tribunal.”
Right, the tribunal.
The heat that had, only moments before, overwhelmed my body suddenly turns cold. Another test. This time, alone. I know I have three months to prepare, but I don’t even know what it is they are going to ask me to do.
And don’t even get me started on how I am supposed to learn how to do Time Magic without anyone who can teach me how to use it.
“Hold on,” Draven says, sitting forward in his seat. “Before we all get caught up in this tribunal and divination nonsense, I think there is one specific future that we need to talk about.” He turns to me and takes one of my hands in his.
All the rest of the boys straighten up, almost simultaneously.
“We need to talk about us,” Draven says, his eyes first meeting mine in a way that reassures me, somehow, and then flickering to each one of the other boys in turn.
“Your time in the infirmary gave us all time to think about what it is that this is,” Cedric says.
“And?” I turn to Draven first, and then Kendall and Flynn who have yet to speak. My stomach has tightened into a knot.
“And even though we did not always get along,” Flynn begins, finally meeting my gaze. “There is one thing we can all agree on.”
“We want you to be our girlfriend,” Cedric says. “All of us, together.”
I have to swallow a lump in the back of my throat as I look between each of them in turn. Any thoughts that this might be some kind of joke disappears at the look on each of their faces.
The last one I turn to meet is Kendall.
“Is that really what you want?” I ask.
He doesn’t speak, but instead leans in, tilts my chin forward, and kisses me softly.
It isn’t like the boys didn’t sneak me quick, chase kisses in the infirmary when the nurse was pretending not to look, but somehow, this feels like the first real kiss I’ve been given in weeks. Since the night of the incident. I don’t want it to end, but it does, and I am left with the lingering touch of his lips on mine for a moment too long.
When I open my eyes again and remember everyone else there, around us, I prepare myself for a flurry of uncomfortable motion. Instead, no one has even looked away.
Draven cups my face in his hand and grins at me so widely, it almost looks stupid.
“What happened to the four of you?” I ask, my voice coming out breathless. “Did the entire world turn on its head?”
“You happened to us,” Flynn says. He leans forward in his seat and reaches out a hand to me. I take it. “And so in a way, it did.”
7
Octavia
The very last thing I want to do on what is my last Sunday before delving back into an even more grueling pace of study than before, is spend the morning being inspected by the new so-called-therapist Dr. Fashu. But that is exactly what I am going to do, because it’s all I can do. It’s not as if I’m in a position to refuse.
Dr. Fashu opens the door even before I can finish knocking. Just the small sliver of his office that I can see beyond is not anything like I expected, at least from a Psychic Mage. I have come to associate them with spaces as cold and unfeeling as they are—or at least they appear to be—most of the time. Cedric is the exception, the person who’s taught me that even the most stoic of Psychic Mages is only so on the outside. It’s just that their walls are often thicker than others.
Probably because of the constant battle to keep each other out.
But Dr. Fashu’s office…it is something else.
He sees the way my eyes flicker between him and the room beyond, but he does nothing to explain. He just bows slightly at me and steps to the side, opening the door a little wider to allow me in.
The walls have been painted a deep shade of red. So red, in fact, that it can only remind me of blood. Black and gold ornaments hang from the walls, and massive painted bamboo shelves are cluttered with all variety of charms and objects.
I take a small step forward, so small that I have to lean further into the room in order for Dr. Fashu to shut the door behind me.
There is one item on the shelves that appears out of place. An uncomfortable, unsmiling photograph of Dr. Fashu beside the principal and several other mages sits at the forefront of one of the shelves. It’s clear that the photograph was taken a long time ago. Although Dr. Fashu essentially remains unchanged, Cedric’s father is almost unrecognizable. I walk over to get a better look at it, but I hear Dr. Fashu make an annoyed grunt from behind me.
“That was taken the last time I came to the states,” Dr. Fashu says. “Shame such a talented mage had to die like that.”
“Huh?”
I glance back over to him. He walks in that aggravatingly slow way of his until he is by my side. He picks up the photograph a moment, and then, just as quickly, lays it face-down on the shelf. “The wife of Mr. Davenport, of course,” Dr. Fashu says. “It’s how we met, and why he specifically requested me when the tribunal insisted you be evaluated.”
I feel a slight pit in my stomach. I guess I had always assumed for some reason that Cedric’s parents had gotten divorced, not that his mother had died. I wonder why Cedric never mentioned it before, and then immediately know I’m an idiot just for thinking it. Of course Cedric didn’t tell me. Telling me emotionally difficult things isn’t exactly his forte.
Dr. Fashu motions to all the rest of the objects on the shelves.
“All artifacts of the Chinese occult,” he says, as I continue to stare. The number here almost rivals our entire library. I wonder how many more there are in the Shanghai school and once again, why no one has made a better effort to copy and share all this knowledge between the schools.
Though I feel no press that signal’s Dr. Fashu’s imposition on my mind, he still somehow knows what I am thinking. “The occult was not stifled by the limited Judeo-Christian mindset in China, as it was here,” he says. “We do not burn our books on magic but…” he glances at the books, and again that uncanny ability to know exactly what I am thinking without having to actually read my mind, unsettles me as he continues, “most Chinese mages are still are not readily willing to share millennia of our secrets with the rest of the world.”
“But then, why did you all agree to the affinity binding?” The ritual prohibits mages from casting any kind of magic prior to participating in it, and then afterwards only within one branch.
“Agree to is?” Dr. Fashu says. “We developed it. Despite our cultural differences, there are some truths that are universal.”
“Like?”
He grunts at me. “The fact that magic must be kept a secret from the public for their own safety, as well as ours. Some
ideas are less popular, but none the less true, like how mages from non-magical families are a liability to the entire system.”
Great. Another one of those. I shove my hands deeper in my pockets and try not to let myself get too offended. The fact that my family does not have magic never bothered me before I got to the academy. It’s everyone else who seems to think it’s some big deal. As long as they don’t stop me from performing the magic I somehow got anyhow, I just have to try not to care about their opinions.
I’d still like to know more about the differences he mentioned between the two mage cultures, but he has already begun to shift the furniture around the room. He doesn’t lift a finger while doing it or utter a single word. Everything around us moves as if a part of an intricate dance. The armchair in the middle of the room flattens out and elongates until it resembles a doctor’s examination table, and a light jumps off one of the shelves and grows too—until its neck is long and bent over like a giant mechanical crane.
I shiver involuntarily. I never liked the doctor’s office as a child, and I never really grew out of it. Something about being poked and prodded has always left me feeling naked in a way that plain nakedness cannot. Not that I enjoy that either.
“Will your assistant be joining us?”
He peers up at me in a way that makes it clear he is getting annoyed with all the questions. Well too bad, he’s just going to have to put with them if I am going to have to put up with him.
“Jessica has the day to settle into the hotel before work begins in earnest.”
“Why isn’t she staying in the dorms?” I ask.
Dr. Fashu adjusts the light a minute so that it will properly glare directly into my eyes where I’ll be sitting. “Jessica is not a student here, so why would she stay in the dorms?”
“She isn’t a—”
Dr. Fashu sighs and stops his fiddling. “No. She will study directly under me until we are finished here. It’ll be a better education than the one she would receive otherwise.” It’s clear that he means to insult the school, but if it means I won’t have to deal with Jessica in all my Psychic classes…I am willing to take it on the chin.
He motions for me to climb onto the examination table, and I do—just grateful that he doesn’t ask me to disrobe first. The feel of the leather where it touches my bare skin is sticky and cold.
“Do you study many students like me and Flynn?” I ask. Maybe students have odd stuff happen to them all the time. I want to believe he actually knows what he’s doing—especially now that I spot the tray of odd-looking implements that have appeared beside the table. Little mirrors and pliers and objects that I don’t want to imagine being used on me.
Or that they might have, at some point, been used on Flynn.
“None at all,” Dr. Fashu says, confirming my worst fears. “But all students are different. At the Shanghai Academy of Mages, we do not leave things up to chance. All students are given thorough and regular examinations. This helps both them, and me.”
The whole room around us is warm, but something about it…the mixture of strange incense, sweat, and sterile instruments, just doesn’t sit well.
“How does it help you?” I ask.
Dr. Fashu sidles up to the table beside me. He doesn’t immediately reach for any of the instruments, but he does take a second to rub some sanitizer into the skin of his hands and forearms. “It allows me to hone my particular set of…skills,” he says.
“Which are?”
He doesn’t say. Rather, he pushes up the sleeve of my right arm and grasps my wrist with both of his hands. First, right across my Earth Mage brand, then the Psychic. Heat flushes my body, and then ice—and then both at once. I don’t know whether to sweat or shiver.
“Stop resisting,” he says, “Or this is going to be even more challenging for the both of us.”
I don’t have the faintest idea what he means by it, so I just force myself to lay back, close my eyes, and relax as much as someone can when a weird and, I have to admit it, kind of creepy therapist feels up their arm. After what seems like forever, he scoots his chair around to the other side and does the same thing with the other two brands.
He does stop for a moment to admire my fourth brand. Time. At first I thought it resembled the face of the clock, but upon closer inspection, it is something a little more complex. There are no numbers, and what I thought were the hour and minute hands are actually lines that cut across the brand, severing it into fractured pieces.
By the time he is finished, I am lightheaded, but that is all. I might have fallen asleep in this chair after sitting here for so long, unable to move, if it weren’t for the increasingly bizarre sensation of being both too hot and too cold at the same time.
“There,” he says. “Now, I would like to test something. Take my hands.”
I sit up, and when I do, I am not prepared for what happens next.
Pain prickles at the tips of my fingers. It spreads to my hands, up my arms, to the rest of my body.
I squirm and try to loosen Dr. Fashu’s grip, but he only holds on to me tighter. “What are you doing?”
“I’m testing your resistance.”
“To what?”
“To me.”
8
Octavia
I was wrong about Dr. Fashu. He is not a creep or an imposter, he is a sadist.
I am shaking from head to toe by the time I’m allowed to leave. He might not have had me strip naked, but I am left exposed to my core. There is only one person I want to see right now. One other person knows Dr. Fashu, and I think I know exactly where to find him.
Flynn may have already read every book in the pitiful excuse for our school’s library, but that doesn’t stop him from spending most days holed up in here. I find him exactly where expected, hunched over the largest book I have ever seen in my life in the corner.
He is so engrossed in it that he doesn’t hear me come in, though I don’t try to be subtle. Everything about me feels jarring and harsh right now. He doesn’t notice me until I physically place a hand on the top of the book and push it down.
Flynn looks up at me through the oversized lenses of his glasses, blinking up with those big dark eyes of his for a few seconds before he registers who I am. As soon as it does, the chair beneath him scrapes out and he gets to his feet.
“What is it?” he asks. He glances to the door to see if I have been followed, and then takes a hesitating step toward me. “What happened?”
I take a deep breath to try to collect my thoughts. Once I am sure I can hold it together, I start to tell him, and I promptly burst into tears. For a second he stands there awkwardly, arms dangling at his sides, fear and shock intermingling on his face.
And then, just as suddenly, he crosses the space between us and surrounds me with his arms. I bury my face into his sweater and try not to get snot all over it while I struggle for the words that remain just out of reach.
I am both mortified by my outburst and completely incapable of stopping it.
The library is not exactly the ideal place for a good old-fashioned cry session, but thanks to its severely limited resources, it is at least private. We’re the only students in here, so though the books may have protested if they had the ability, I am left to cry in peace.
The weight of Flynn’s arms on my back and shoulders stills the quivers of my own—both from the pain and exhaustion of this morning’s first session with Dr. Fashu, and the flow of tears. Soon, the shivering fades as do the sobs. I’m not ready to extricate myself from the softness of Flynn’s sweater or the hardness of his chest underneath.
“What is she doing here?” I manage to stutter out.
I feel Flynn tense beneath me.
It isn’t what I came here to ask. It just sort of…slipped out. Just because she wasn’t a part of my first experience with Dr. Fashu doesn’t diminish the fact that her presence has changed something between us, and I don’t like it.
“I don’t know,” he starts to say, b
ut then he stops himself. “No. That isn’t the truth.”
He doesn’t loosen his grip on me, but I force myself to tilt my head up to look at him.
“I am sure Jessica followed me here on purpose,” he says. “Some sort of sadistic inability to let me be happy, I’m sure.”
I bury my face back into his sweater.
“Is Dr. Fashu always such a beast?”
“I’m sorry, Octavia, but I can’t hear you like that.” Flynn gently releases me and bit and moves to hold me at arm’s length instead. “There,” he says, swiping his thumb across the gentle skin below my eyes. “Much better. Now, why don’t you tell me what happened?”
He sits down beside me at the table, careful not to let go of me as he does—almost like he’s afraid I am going to break. Normally this kind of coddling would frustrate me, but my morning with Dr. Fashu has left me unusually shaken.
I tell him what Dr. Fashu did, the way he drew magic out of me or poured it into me—to be honest, I am not really quite sure.
“He said it had something to do with him testing my resistance to magic, but it just…” I close my eyes a second, “It just felt like torture.”
Flynn is quiet for a moment. When I finally open my eyes, he looks right back at me.
He is neither shocked, like I would expect, or horrified, like I might have hoped. I have to force another breath in through my swollen nose. “Did he ever do the same to you?”
“I know it doesn’t seem right, but it’s quite standard for his kind of practice,” Flynn says, carefully. “I’ve been on the receiving end myself, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.”
I want to bury myself in his sweater again and never come out, but I force myself to sit up straighter and compose myself. “I don’t think I can do this twice a week. It’s too much.”
Now Flynn smiles just a bit. His hands slide slowly down my arms to take my hands in his. “Don’t worry,” he says. “He is a pompous prick, but he isn’t a monster. He shouldn’t do that to you again.”
Adapt: Book Two of the Forgotten Affinities Series Page 4
