Chapter 11 Dorian
Dorian
I love, and am in despair—yes—despair.
—Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho
The soft autumn morning outside draws the world downward, brings gazes to the wet pavement, shadows into inky spills, gold and red leaves to the grass.
I pass customers writing in journals, sipping chamomile tea, or chatting over cupcakes and cookies.
The Acroteria at this late hour is quiet.
It was the closest place to the hospital.
I wasn’t in the mood to go back to my apartment on the southern side of town anyway.
When I come out of the bathroom, having just changed the bandage on my arm like the doctor said to, and return to our booth—the one by the arch made of books—a steaming blueberry muffin waits for me on a small, slightly cracked ceramic plate. Atticus’s doing. He’s always taking care of us.
Raven watches me approach, a feverish glint in her eye. It bothers me a little that she doesn’t seem at all shaken that she practically set me on fire. She almost looks…excited.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, Dorian,” she says when I slide onto the bench. I think it’s the thousandth time she’s said it.
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too. I’m just a little freaked out.”
“I’m really, really sorry,” she says. “As sorry as I am that the book is destroyed. Ugh!”
She’s been apologizing nonstop since we jumped in a cab to the hospital, all throughout when she sat with me in the emergency room, and especially when the nurse smeared gel on my pink and tender skin and wrapped it in gauze.
To be honest, Raven’s constant stream of apologies only reminds me that she set me on fire.
By accident. But still. Maybe I’m being harsh.
Maybe she’s just freaked out like we all are.
Atticus clears his throat and leans in toward us.
“What we just did…It was dark. Potent. Frankly terrifying.” He stops, glancing around the cafe again, maybe fearing he’s been overheard, and whispers, “That was nothing like the stuff we’ve seen on campus.
They’re struggling to turn roses to ash, and we’re…
summoning lightning? Why can’t anyone else do what we can do? ”
“Good question.” Raven’s eyes never break away from my arm, even while my hand is hidden. “It felt…” She trails off and doesn’t finish. I almost think she’s going to say “good.”
“What happened afterward wasn’t your fault, Raven,” I say. “It was—”
She nods, her gaze distant. “Power is what it was.”
She’s right, and we’re messing with things we don’t understand. I worry it could have been worse—much, much worse. But I don’t want to say it.
“Maybe we didn’t do anything wrong. What if the spell worked and we just didn’t know what it was supposed to do?” I ask, but the words ring hollow.
Raven doesn’t buy it. “The instructions were clear. I was just lighting a candle, nothing more.” She shakes her head. “No, something was off. Maybe I mistranslated the grammar or got the dialect wrong.”
I point to the table for emphasis. “There is one other possibility. Maybe, in your hands, the spell reacted differently than it might have with any normal person. Listen, what if the spell worked exactly how it was meant to? It was an evocation, right? Words change the material world. That’s what Warden Stone said at the recitation.
Maybe in less talented hands, the change is quite small.
A tiny flame. Coming from you, though, the words had power.
You have power, and you summoned something far more potent than a little flame to light a candle.
In your hands, the spell is able to call lightning. ”
“You think?” Raven meets my eyes, her black ones matching mine, a curious look in hers.
It’s like I’ve said something she’s always been waiting to hear, but no one’s ever said it before.
It’s true, though; we’re all powerful, aren’t we?
Our strength is magnified by learning the spells, or perhaps the spells amplify the strength within us.
“It makes some sense.” Raven looks troubled. “I asked my deskmate, Pippa, what kind of magic she can do. Get this—she can tell time without looking at a clock.”
“That’s it?” Atticus is indignant.
Raven rolls her eyes. “Yep, that’s it. I can tell the time without looking at a clock either. I have Google Home.”
I’m completely irritated by this news. “How on earth did she get in, then? Sibylline students are supposed to be the best magicians in the world! I thought they all had something special.”
“Yeah, that something special is money,” says Atticus archly.
Raven blushes. She’s always a little sensitive about her background.
A resigned laugh escapes me, and Atticus’s eyes flash delightedly at the sound of it. I look away, suddenly feeling hot under the collar.
I wanted to kiss Atticus back in the archive…
But I couldn’t. Touching him—touching anyone—is like asking me to grip a hot stove or a bolt of lightning.
It’s not that I don’t find Atticus attractive, it’s that my crush on Raven is all-consuming.
I’d never really noticed him before in that way.
And I did find him very appealing last night.
I’d never really thought about whether I am attracted to men or women.
It’s not something that worries me, thinking I might like Atticus.
Curious. I’d always thought I’d wait as long as I needed for Raven to come around.
But what if—what if I was waiting for the wrong person?
“Could we try any other spell?” Atticus asks, shifting focus back to the matter at hand.
“You’d really want to?” Raven looks nonplussed.
Atticus sighs. “I’m not ready to give up. Are you? If we don’t try, we can’t learn. We came here to learn about magic, didn’t we?”
“I guess, but the book was ruined in the fire,” I say. A part of me is almost relieved when I recall how the book burned, but the other half wishes that we could have had another chance. Maybe, with time, we would have been able to control the lightning itself. “We’re back to square one.”
“Plus,” adds Raven, “my landlord is kicking me out. I have to pack up my things—what’s left of my things, anyway—by tomorrow.”
“Is that legal?” Atticus looks appalled.
Raven shakes her head and says, “I don’t know.”
“Where will you go?” I ask.
She shrugs half-heartedly. “I could check in to a hotel for now, I guess.”
I would offer her my apartment, but it’s a hovel compared to what she’s used to, and I’m too embarrassed. Thankfully, Atticus speaks up. “You can move in with me,” he says. “I’m closer to campus anyway.”
“Are you sure?” Raven asks.
“It’s not a problem. Just so long as we don’t start any more fires,” Atticus says.
He meant it as a joke, but Raven hides her face in her hands and lets out a small groan.
“We need another book in the meantime,” says Atticus.
“Won’t they get suspicious if a second one goes missing?” I ask.
Raven lifts her face out of her hands and glances around. “One going missing might not raise alarms. Two? I don’t know if we can risk it. And after being the cause of its demise, I don’t really want to risk stealing another.”
She has a point, and Atticus knows it, too. I see it in his eyes.
We fall into silence, my head spinning, a hundred different theories colliding in my thoughts.
Maybe that book really was dangerous. After all, it was locked up.
Maybe there was a reason why it was hidden away in the basement.
It contained a drawing that looked exactly like what I saw when I touched the wand.
I’ve been reliving that dream ever since my first day of work, and now I can’t get it out of my thoughts.
The image of the man on the pentagram comes back to me.
Again, I hear screams, and I can almost smell the incense.
“Adelina! Adelina! Please!” screams the voice.
I wanted to forget, to push the images out of my mind, but I can’t. Finally I say, “Have either of you ever heard the name Adelina before?”
It’s a unique enough name. I’d hoped they would know any association with Sibylline, but they offer blank stares, and Atticus shakes his head.
Raven says, “I haven’t, no. Why do you ask?”
I lick my lips and take in a deep breath, mustering the nerve. I don’t want to frighten them, and yet I can’t keep this secret to myself.
“My first day at the museum,” I say, “I touched an artifact, this old wand that she used. It belonged to Hecate.”
Both Raven and Atticus seem impressed, though about different things.
“The goddess of magic,” Raven says, amazed, at the same time Atticus asks, “You had a vision?” His eyes are bright with curiosity.
I nod. “I saw a person, a Sibylline student, chained up on the floor, lying on a star just like the one drawn in the grimoire. There was blood, fire, and screaming. I think Adelina was using Hecate’s wand to cast a spell, a deadly powerful one, and it may have involved a murder that was somehow a part of the ritual casting. ”
Raven leans forward intently but neither of them says anything. A hush falls over the table, making it seem as if the air itself is holding its breath.
“There’s more…” I pause, uncertain of what to say. “I’m not completely sure what I saw, but there was another presence in the room, something they’d summoned. I saw a shadow, but nothing else. It was alive.”
Atticus and Raven glance at each other, confused.
Atticus asks, “Like an evocation? They summoned an elemental? Or a spirit?”
I shrug. “It wasn’t human.”
“How do you know it was summoned?” Raven asks. “Did you see it happen?”
I shake my head. “No, I didn’t see everything. I witnessed flashes. It was like a dream. I somehow knew that’s what was happening, but everything seemed as if it was happening at once.”
“And you think it was some sort of ritual, like the one we saw in the grimoire?”
“Possibly…” I shake my head. “I don’t know. Honestly, I haven’t seen a lot of nightmare rituals.” I try for a joke—something to cut the tension—but it doesn’t hit.
A second silence falls over the table as Raven and Atticus exchange glances.
A part of me wishes I’d never brought it up.
I don’t want to scare them away from using their gifts.
But maybe there are things in this world that truly are frightening.
I wonder if we should change course and try for something smaller and less dangerous.
Maybe the book should have burned a long time ago.
Atticus lets out a heavy sigh. Raven simply stares at the empty plate in front of her, her brows knitted in concentration.
“I’ve read most of the histories written about the school,” Raven says, “and I’ve never heard of anything like that. Ritual murder? Summoning? Wouldn’t everyone have heard about it? Wouldn’t it have been all over the news? If some student died…”
“I know,” I say, understanding what she’s getting at. “It doesn’t make sense, not yet. But I do know what I saw. And unless my power shows me things that aren’t true, which I doubt…”
“You’ve never had issues with your magic—right?” Raven asks. “It shows you the past, and it’s never been wrong?”
“Never,” I repeat so it sinks in. I’ve never been wrong.
Which means a student died on the pentagram, summoning the shadow I saw in my vision.