Chapter 16 The Secret History #2
On the first page is Crater, Virgo: To Make a Perfect Poison. She recognizes Virgo from Odette’s signature.
She gasps when the door handle twists.
Lamour stumbles in and growls, “What are you doing?”
Her wide-eyed gaze snaps up to him. “I was just reading.”
“I told you not to touch the grimoire.” He storms over to her and rips it from beneath her eyes.
She flashes her palms innocently. “It was open and calling to me.”
He pauses, clutching the grimoire to his chest. “Calling to you? You heard it?”
Stammering, she says, “I—I heard something. A vibration. A deep, resonant—”
“Hum,” they say in unison, and for the first time, Claudia sees Professor Lamour smile. Usually during their studies, he can barely see straight on account of the liquor. But tonight, he’s skirting the edge of sober, and she has his attention. She’s done something right.
“That’s impressive, Claudia. It normally takes months, even years, for a celestial witch to hear the call of the grimoire.”
“My mother could hear the stars. She taught me to listen, too.” She almost asks if Lamour could explain more of her mother’s death, but she doesn’t.
“You knew of your power from a very young age, then?”
“I knew there was something to the stars that I didn’t understand, but I had no idea it would be like this. I certainly didn’t think I had genuine magic. What about you? When did you find out?”
Lamour goes very still. He almost speaks, but stops himself.
There’s a debate happening behind his eyes—to lie or tell the truth.
Eventually, he sighs, grabbing a black parlor chair and pulling it across from Claudia.
Now, from behind the desk, Claudia feels like a professor herself.
It’s a little fun. She sits up straight and smooths out her robes.
“I was a Rhetoric student here at Cygnus when I was your age. My Rhetorical Theory professor—Banneker was his name—woke me up in the middle of the night when I first arrived and brought me here where a whole group of students was waiting. He told us all about our power then, named us the Eyes of Andromeda, and urged us to keep it a secret, for the witches before us had all died. If only he knew that months later, it would happen to him, too.” Lamour’s shoulders sink while he speaks.
“How?”
“Someone slit his throat,” Lamour says, swallowing a gag. “And then they killed all my friends. Which is a damn shame, because I was the least gifted celestial witch of them all.”
Whoever this killer truly is, they’ve taken everyone from Lamour, and he hasn’t been all right since. A million questions race through her mind: When did they die? All at once, or scattered throughout the year? Who found the bodies? How did Lamour survive?
But instead of any of that, she asks him, “Your friends—what were they like?”
And he smiles.
“Well, we were a delightfully terrible class. Always up to mischief. Sneaking around, stealing herbs from the greenhouse, and, of course, studying the stars in secret.” His eyes twinkle. “I miss them every day.”
“What were their names?”
“There was Cleo, Sidra, Qian, and Fox.”
“Fox?”
“His real name was Jonathan Fecksmund.” He looks up, as if watching his memories across the ceiling. “I don’t even remember who called him Fox first, but it stuck.”
“Did you have a nickname, too?”
A quiet laugh cracks through his tight smile.
“Oh, yes. There was this incident in the Chow—you all call it the Treaty now, but we called it the Chow—where I dropped a steak knife onto my foot. It landed—well, here, I’ll show you.
” To her surprise, he takes off his soft suede shoe and his loose white sock to reveal a missing pinky toe on his left foot.
“It was horrific at the time. Blood everywhere. We couldn’t find the toe.
Who knows, it may still be in there. And from then on, they called me Stump.
We were always sneaking around the High Sage, running through the halls to avoid his wrath.
Though running became much more difficult without my toe. ”
The two of them share a laugh. Lamour relaxes in his chair, leaning close, his smile widening. He loved his friends so much. They say that grief is love with nowhere to go. Lamour must be drowning in it.
“Who was the High Sage when you were here?”
“Triche. He’s been here for…” Lamour looks up, mumbling, counting. “Almost fifty years now.”
“Fifty?! He must be…” Claudia tries to do the math, but she comes to impossible conclusions.
“He’s very, very old.”
“How?”
“Magic. The gods want him alive, and so, he is.”
Claudia tilts her head. “I thought our magic couldn’t disrupt the cosmic order of life and death.”
“Ours can’t, but theirs can. And they like Triche.”
“Do you like Triche?”
“I do, absolutely. He’s incredibly smart and deeply passionate about the success of others.
I’ve always admired him, and he’s been there for me during some of the most difficult times in my life.
But he confuses me. Only gods know why he recruited me as a professor. I’m no Banneker, that’s for sure.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You are a wonderful professor. It’s an honor to be your pupil.”
His eyes go soft and shiny. “Thank you, Claudia.”
A beat of silence follows. Claudia’s gaze flits up to the board. “What are you trying to cast?”
“Escape the urge to drink. It’s worse than it’s ever been.”
“Since Odette?”
He nods. “It’s brought up so many painful memories. So much grief. Drinking is the only thing that helps, but at the same time, it makes it all worse. I can’t figure out the spell to make it stop.”
Carefully, Claudia reaches forward and slides the grimoire before her.
Thumbing through, she waits for inspiration to strike, but the answer isn’t in here.
It’s not a spell that already exists. She’s going to have to get creative.
Reaching down to her bag, she pulls out her book on avian constellations.
Flipping fast through the pages, she smiles, her heart thundering when she knows she’s found something good.
“I think I can help.” She leaps up from the desk and over to the board where she picks up the eraser. “May I?”
He nods. She erases Crater. “I think your approach with Crater is too literal. Besides, you’re not simply trying to stop drinking. You’re trying to grieve properly. Get out your grief, and the urge to numb it will go away.” She draws Cygnus, Phoenix, Ara.
“Cygnus for laying to rest the souls you lost here. Phoenix for rising from your pain. And I’ve added Ara, the altar, for enduring spiritual growth and positivity. What do you think?”
He stands and walks over to her side, eyes narrowing on her proposed spell. He turns, picking up the book on avian constellations. For a whole minute, his gaze flits back and forth from the book to the board, and he mumbles to himself.
Then, he grins.
“Claudia, I think you’ve just written your first spell worthy of adding to the grimoire.”
Her heart leaps. “Really?”
“Really. That means you must name it.”
Tapping the chalk against her chin, she ponders for a bit. “To Heal the Soul.” She turns to Lamour. “Thoughts?”
“Perfect.”
As their lesson ends, Claudia feels like she’s floating back to her room.
She’s doing so well. She’s on Lamour’s good side, as a pupil and as a person.
She’s going to get everything she wants—power for herself, protection from the killer, and freedom from her bargain.
All she has to do is keep pushing forward, keep solving spells, keep untangling the mystery of the stars until Dorian can slip out from the ones that hold him in place.