“No promises,” I say, and since it isn’t exactly like I’m in any position to refuse, I follow suit and take a sip. The taste is so bitter, I want to immediately spit it back out. There is no other way to describe it. It is just the very essence of bitter.
Dr. Fashu on the other hand, has no problem drinking the rest of the tea without complaint. He’s already tipped back the very last of the cup before I’ve ventured to take a second sip. The bottom of his cup is lined with little black splotches where some of the powdered leaves congeal.
“You’re not going to read them?”
Dr. Fashu looks at me oddly for a second, so I quickly add, “The tea leaves, I mean. Isn’t that a thing that witches…I mean mages…do?”
“Perhaps the superstitious ones,” he says. He tilts the bottom of his cup for me to see. “But all I see is plant matter.”
I force myself to chug the rest of my own plant matter, but I do take a peek at my own leaves at the bottom of the cup before I set it down. I’m not particularly superstitious, but with everything going on, I’ll take all I can get. But all I still see is shapeless blobs.
“Careful now, you stare too long at anything, you might begin to think you see something,” Dr. Fashu says. “Kratom is also well-known for that sort of thing.”
I set the cup down and Jessica steps up to clear them away. That is one thing I could get used to. I don’t feel the effects right away, but I am sure I will soon.
“What exactly does kratom do to mages that it doesn’t do to normal people?” I ask, as Jessica returns in a moment with another tray—this one lined with dozens of tiny jars and boxes. I’m familiar with the effects on non-magical people. I had acquaintances in high school who took it around me, though I was never one to try. I didn’t like the way it gave them the jitters. I’m already jittery enough on my own.
Dr. Fashu starts picking through the boxes on the new tray. “It stimulates the mind and allows for greater concentration, focus, and energy,” he says. “It also increases pain tolerance and endurance—hence the ability to cast spells usually outside of your range.”
He finally finds the little box he is looking for and sets it gingerly on the table in front of us.
“Then why don’t mages take it all the time?” I ask. “And why hasn’t anyone ever mentioned it to me before?”
“Because it is addictive and, I might add, has something of a bad reputation.”
“Oh, another substance with a bad reputation,” I say, thinking back to the Salamander Brandy that the school used to serve until it was used by The Underground to try and flush me out of Homecoming. They were successful, and so was the beverage that has since been banned from school grounds. I for one, do not miss it. I am also not thrilled at being exposed to another mage…substance…so soon.
“This one isn’t going to make me hallucinate, is it?”
“No, but it may bring on visions,” Dr. Fashu says, but immediately laughs. “But I doubt you’re one of the few mages that can have those. Even with the rest of your particular…talents…it would be a stretch to imagine you have that ability as well.”
For once, it seems, I know something more than Dr. Fashu. I’m not about to tell him just how ironic it is that he just said that, however, because I think I know exactly where that would lead.
“Then why did you give it to me?” I ask.
“I gave it to you in the hopes that it will keep a repeat of last time happening here today. We don’t have time for you to keep ending our sessions short because you can’t control your magic.”
Dr. Fashu takes the lid off the box he has selected and takes out a small object I think I recognize from science projects in elementary school. It’s one of those clear balls that, when touched, little arms of electricity branch out from the center to look like fingers of lightning.
He slides the little device towards me on the table. I pick it up, and when it does not light up, turn it over. There are no batteries inside.
“I want you to generate the electricity for it,” Dr. Fashu says.
I open my mouth to protest, but he cuts me off. “I know about the necklace.”
I cringe inside, knowing that if she didn’t already, Jessica now knows too. I tug at the nearly invisible chain around my neck and pull out the gift Cedric gave me. The tiny diamond at the bottom crackles with the lightning stuck inside it. My little spark.
I’ve never practiced with lightning before, since it is a late second-year magic. It isn’t even one of the magics encompassed in my tribunal exam. But if Dr. Fashu is looking for a way to test my limits, I suppose he might as well start at the top.
I’m not really sure where to begin, so I just stick one of my fingers into the slot where the battery is supposed to go, and I focus on how it would feel to have energy rushing through me. As soon as I think it, I start to feel a tingle.
I write it off as the kratom starting to take effect, but then it grows stronger. It starts in my fingertips, much like the pain of Dr. Fashu’s last tests. First it appears in the hand that holds the lightning necklace then races down my arm, through my body, and down to the other side. The contraption in my hand springs to life with a dull hum.
I am so surprised that for a moment, I let too much energy surge through me. That dull hum grows into a loud screech and the device in my hand sprouts so many tiny fingers of lightning reaching out against the glass that it appears to be just one big blob of light. It shorts and crackles until a thin line cracks the glass in long, spidery lines. I draw back as the current surges momentarily back into me with a little jolt of pain.
“Ow!” I shake out my hand and then stick the tips of my fingers in my mouth to stop the sting.
Dr. Fashu does not congratulate or chastise me. He just very calmly sets aside the box, turns to Jessica, and nods.
When she returns from the back room, she is wheeling in something large and rounded on top. I do not need to ask what it is.
This time when I place my hands on the outstretched glass, I am reminded of another massive glass orb. I know this one is hollow, and that it is meant to conduct and contain electricity. But when I stare inside, I am only reminded of the horror that I met the last time I stared into a great ball of glass this size.
“Fear is an excellent way to lose control,” Dr. Fashu says. I glance up at him over the top of the contraption. Unlike the crystal ball, it is actually ordinary glass, so when I let my hands fall away from it to my sides, oily smudges are left where my fingertips touched last.
“I don’t want to do this,” I say.
Dr. Fashu nods, and then reaches into his box for something else. This time, he takes out a small, broken clock. “Then we will try this instead.”
He sets it gingerly on the table between us.
I take one look at it, turn back to the ball, and press my hands to the glass.
28
Octavia
My meeting with Dr. Fashu turns out to be far more instructive than I could have hoped. Not only did I learn that kratom should not be taken if I plan on sleeping within the next twenty-four hours, as it leaves me positively jittery with energy, but I also learned something far more valuable.
I’ve been trying to work out how to find the Voodoo shop from my vision when I’m only allowed out once a week, and under the watchful eyes of Dr. Fashu. But if it isn’t actually Dr. Fashu who is looking, there may be a way around it.
In order for my plan to work, I’m going to have to keep it a secret from everyone except the last person I want to be confiding in right now.
“I want to find the shop from my vision, and I am going to use Halloween as the cover to do it.”
I tell Flynn in the first seconds after he opens up his door. I haven’t spoken to him since he told me about Jessica, so I can tell he is surprised to see me. He’s been studying something, as usual, but he doesn’t look like he’s slept in ages. His hair is a mess, and his notes, usually so tidy and organized, are strewn across the room.
He takes off his glasses to rub the spot between his eyes.
“Absolutely not.”
“You’re not exactly in a position to refuse.”
I glare at him, and then shove past and into the room before he can stop me. He shuts the door, but hesitantly.
I point to the mess. “What’s all this?” I ask.
“I’m studying the re-binding ceremony,” he says. “I’ve done it before, obviously, but I was hoping, after last night, that there was something I missed that would make it a more viable option.”
“Well, forget about that right now.” I move some of the papers out of the way so I can sit on the end of the bed. It’s been a minute since I was in here. The last time I was, Draven had nearly gotten beaten to death and Flynn had just figured out why I had multiple affinities.
It is my turn for my cheeks to burn at the memory of how it was also here, that same day, that all four of my paired mages agreed to try to be with me, together.
The memory only serves to make me feel even guiltier for what I am about to make him do. I know I shouldn’t though, after all he has done. It’s that lingering anger that pushes me to ask him even though I know it’s wrong.
“I need you to do something for me,” I say. “And you aren’t going to like it.”
I lay out my idea, every messy, half-formed part that I’ve been able to come up with on my own. It’s a good sign that rather than flatly refusing again, this time when I am finished, Flynn just sits down in his chair and stares off at the blank wall to mull it over.
“Well?” I can’t help myself after the silence stretches on for what feels like forever.
He finally looks at me. “The plan itself has some major flaws,” he says. “Like how you plan on breaking away from the group without alerting Dr. Fashu.”
“That is where you come in,” I say. One hand absentmindedly worries away at the right finger of my left hand as I tell him the final part of my plan, the one that I know he is going to like the least. “Jessica is responsible for that. If you keep her…distracted…she might not even notice I am gone.”
The chair scrapes across the floor so loudly, I almost have to cover my ears. One second he sits dispassionately in the chair, the next he is standing, hands clenched, and staring at the wall again.
“I won’t do it. Jessica has already caused enough problems between us. I’d rather just come along. If you have two second-year mages with you, Dr. Fashu won’t even have reason to be concerned.”
“But you’re a liability now,” I remind him. “Until you sort things out with Jessica, you aren’t going to be able to help us if something goes wrong out there. For all I know, if you come along, I won’t be able to do anything either.”
“I don’t like it.”
“And I don’t like the fact that you were supposed to be dating me, and you’re still engaged to someone else.” I raise a finger before he can protest again, “But here we are.”
Flynn continues staring at the wall for a second, but then he slowly, ever so slowly, eases himself back down in his chair. For a brief second, his eyes fall down to his hands in his lap, and I think I see something like shame cross his face. But when he looks at me again, it is replaced by determination.
“You don’t know her like I do,” he says. “Jessica won’t be appeased by anything short of public humiliation.”
“Then do that,” I say. “You’ve already humiliated me enough in private, might as well it count this time.”
He flinches at the words.
“If this is what it takes for me to prove to you that it is you I want, and not Jessica, then I’ll do it.”
“I’m not saying this’ll mean the fact that you lied to me doesn’t matter,” I say, getting up from the bed. “But it’s a start.”
29
Octavia
“Okay great, sounds like a plan.”
The fact that the words are coming out of Wednesdays mouth about anything, let alone my sudden plans to go out for Halloween in four day’s time, is highly suspicious.
I stretch my neck to either side, somehow trying to shake that ache that always lingers after my sessions with Dr. Fashu. I thought that the fact that we had moved on from testing my magical tolerance levels to something a little more hands-on would mean I wouldn’t spend the entire afternoon walking like a nursing home patient, but I was sorely mistaken. Though mostly just sore.
I did manage to survive testing my limits with electricity. And glass. And even molten metals. Anything to avoid that one thing that everyone so desperately wants me to just suddenly master; Time.
If I knew how to manage that, I wouldn’t keep finding myself in these situations. Three months to prepare for the tribunal would suddenly become three years. I’d be the most prepared mage they ever saw.
But as it is, I just keep having to run my hand across the back of my head to try and flatten my hair back down after it’s been shocked enough to stand constantly on end.
“So, you’re really okay with going as twin witches?” I can’t stop myself from staring at her as she scratches away at her homework at her desk.
I sit cross-legged on her bed, looking over my own list of magic I need to be practicing this afternoon. Cedric promised to help me catch up on the Psychic work I missed last week, but he still hasn’t texted me back to tell me when he’s coming by. I’d ask Flynn to help while I wait but…I still don’t trust his so called “help” not to backfire on us again. At least not until he’s gotten a chance to talk to Jessica about what we agreed on.
Wednesday just makes a noncommittal grunt, and I decide to take it as a victory. Though I am interested to know what’s got her so distracted that she can’t even find time to argue with me about what is arguably her favorite holiday. Her fingers keep twitching towards the edge of her desk, where she’s casually set her phone just out of reach. I know the setup well. Her phone is positioned the way I place it when I am desperately waiting for a message, but am trying to convince myself I’m not.
“Are you even listening to me?”
When she just grunts again, I jump up and snatch the phone off her desk. She makes a little surprised screeching, gurgling, noise but can’t catch me before I’ve jumped up on the bed and try to unlock her phone. But the password, the same one she’s used since middle school, doesn’t work.
Wednesday swipes the phone back and shoves it in her pocket.
“I changed it,” she says, “Because I thought you shouldn’t be the only one allowed to keep secrets anymore.”
“Secrets? What kinds of secrets?”
Wednesday wrinkles up her nose and just pulls back her chair to go back to studying. Before she does so, she reconsiders her phone placement and shoves it down into her bra instead.
“None of your beeswax,” she says.
“This has got to do with Mathilda, doesn’t it?”
Her face turns red, so I know I’m right. We never got to finish the conversation we started the other day before she ran off, and I figure now is as good a time as ever.
“So what you were saying before, about getting paired up with Mathilda…” Wednesday tenses up and pretends to keep writing in her notebook, but she doesn’t outright stop me, which I take as a good sign. “Are you two like…an item now?”
“No, we’re not!” She says it so adamantly, I would have thought I suggested she was into goats, not girls. She must catch this too, because she quickly adds, though significantly quieter, “Not…not yet.”
“But you’d like to be?”
Wednesday just turns back to her homework, but I think I understand her silence.
I poke her in the rib with my pointer finger. “Admit it,” I say. “You knew all along.”
She ignores me until I poke her three more times, and then she spins in her seat.
“I would’ve told you,” she says. “I tell you everything.”
“Then what aren’t you telling me now?”
She averts her eyes. I’ve never see
n her this shy before.
“I promise, I’ll tell you soon. It just isn’t the right time yet.”
Three rapid, curt knocks at the door save me from trying to pry her any further.
Cedric stands outside, the gift of something edible packaged up in Styrofoam under one arm. This one really knows the way to my heart.
“I didn’t know you were on your way!” I say, hoping he hasn’t overheard too much of what we were saying. I haven’t gotten the chance to test how soundproof these dorm rooms are, and though I might be nosy with Wednesday about her love life, I am the last person who’s going to out her before she’s ready.
“I was just next door,” Cedric says, nodding out the window towards the academy. “I didn’t think I needed to ask first.”
“You…don’t,” I say. I glance back at Wednesday a moment. “Do you want to…”
She waves an arm at us and turns back to studying. “Don’t wait up for me,” she says.
I notice she takes her phone out of her bra when she thinks we have already turned to go, and whatever’s on the screen makes her smile.
I haven’t really spoken to Cedric much since Saturday night either. He was so sweet to apologize for the mirror incident in class, and then to tell me about his mother…but all I could think about afterwards was how it had to do with me. I feel guilty about it even now.
I haven’t been able to force myself to go back to the divination room ever since that night with Flynn, but Cedric doesn’t know about that, so when he suggests we study there, I’m not able to come up with a good excuse fast enough to avoid it.
He waits until the door is shut and I am squeezed into the furthest corner of the chair as far away as possible from the hell ball before he turns around and a frown has creased his perfect face.
“What’s all this about Halloween?”
Oh, I should’ve known he would be wary of it. I dare a quick glance towards that ball in the middle of the table, but have to look away at once. I can still see her in there. His mother. Dead and decayed, her mouth yawning wide in her desperate plea. Damn Flynn and his backfiring Psychic Magic.
Adapt: Book Two of the Forgotten Affinities Series Page 15
