30. Seb
SEB
“Wake up.” Then, “Sebastian? Your phone is ringing.”
He opened his eyes, no idea where he was. Beneath him, something vibrated. Slowly it came back: the secret room, the wait for security.
“What time is it?” He wiped drool out of the corner of his mouth with his palm and fished for his phone.
“Almost two.”
“I thought you said they’d be done by 1:30?”
“You were very asleep.”
He glanced down, taking in the blanket covering him, then looked at his phone. Gemma. He accepted the call.
“Where are you! You were supposed to come over ages ago. I’ve texted like thirty times.”
He held the phone away from his ear, hoping Lily couldn’t hear, but the way she winced at Gemma’s tinny shriek told him she had.
“Sorry,” he whispered, even though Lily could clearly hear him. “I fell asleep.” He checked his phone. There weren’t actually thirty texts, but close enough. In his peripheral vision, Lily grimaced.
“Whatever. Just…next time let me know. Should I come over there?”
“No!” he said too quickly. Lily, who had busied herself elsewhere, glanced over. “I’m just—I really need a good night’s sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Gemma hung up. He threw off the blanket and folded it, putting it back in its pile. With a yawn, he stretched, arms overhead and reaching back, his spine popping.
“Thanks for letting me sleep. I feel bad that you were just waiting here. You didn’t need to do that.”
“It’s no problem. You looked like you needed it.”
“Really though, you could have—”
“It’s fine, Sebastian.”
“Seb.”
“What?”
He joined her at the table, where she was crouched, looking at the wolves they’d made in lab, now sleeping pressed back-to-back in a lemniscate. “My friends call me Seb.” He grinned. “You stole them?”
“We made them. It’s not stealing. I didn’t want them to get thrown out.” She petted the female wolf with her finger and it stirred gently. “How long do you think the enchantment will last?”
“Honestly, I’m surprised it’s still going. In the arena, Living Earth lasts maybe ten minutes max. I guess this was pretty powerful, and a tiny area of effect. So…I don’t know.”
Lily made a thoughtful noise.
“So, how are we going to do this?”
“Let’s start in the lower level. You take notes, and I’ll keep us from triggering security. Get your bag.”
They walked down the spiral stair and across the dark vestibule—the spiraling compass on the floor wrought in shades of gray and deeper black by the night.
Their footsteps on the marble echoed dully, but to his nerves each step felt like a pistol’s report.
Seb’s heart thudded wetly, and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
He’d been places on campus he wasn’t supposed to be plenty of times, but he’d always been in charge then, and never anything as blatantly illegal as the library after hours.
He watched Lily hawkishly. Her hands worked through a repetitive motion, her lips moved silently.
Curiosity roiled through him. He had a thousand questions for her, about her secret room, her ability to break Windermere’s wards, whatever it was she was doing at that very moment.
When they reached their study stack, she sighed and turned on her phone flashlight.
In the ghostly blue light, her forehead was damp with sweat and her under eyes deeply bruised with shadows.
“We can talk now.”
“How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Break the wards? Keep us from setting off every alarm in the building?”
“Practice.” She sounded cagey. “Take a picture of that symbol,” she ordered.
Seb obeyed, both of them wincing at the flash.
“Maybe I should draw them?”
“Yeah, maybe. Just…draw fast. I can’t keep this up forever, especially when we get into the main stacks.”
“But really,” he said, pulling out his journal. “That’s some serious spontaneous casting. You have to be almost—” He’d been about to say, “almost as powerful as me,” but he was now very invested in Lily not thinking he was an asshole.
She glanced at him, an eyebrow raised.
“Seriously powerful.”
“It’s hereditary,” she said, a playful curve to her lips.
“Really?” He paused mid-sketch. He wished Tori were here—she could have done a better, faster job.
“More or less.”
“Can I ask something…potentially offensive?”
She laughed then, half-rolling her eyes. “I promise whatever you’re about to say isn’t half as bad as the worst I’ve heard.”
He considered that for a moment, hating everyone. “Your father was normal, right?” She nodded. “So…how are you strong enough to go to Windermere? I thought the whole reason mixing magical with mundane was so taboo was because it dilutes the magic in the bloodline.”
As she turned back to him, silhouetted in the light from his phone, she looked for a moment like the version of herself from his dreams.
Her voice was very quiet. “That is what they say, isn’t it?”
New levels of understanding cascaded into place, each realization a little worse than the last. He stood, slack-jawed.
“Fuck.”
“C’mon,” she said, already halfway into the next room. “Catch up.”