Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
drawing the line with her hands before she’d finished turning. She threw the glass up between them, without even seeing what
was there.
But what was there just batted it away.
One swish of a wand, and there was nothing between them again.
It was just her, and Bram, and then outlined in the doorway.
Professor Hargreaves.
Fully clothed at three in the morning, in one of her pinched, practically Victorian dresses. Every iron-gray hair just so,
not a lick of tiredness in her steely eyes. Like she was always just waiting for things like this—and powerful enough that
she could definitely rise to the occasion.
Though the latter was a given.
After all, she’d done this. And casually, too. Dear god, Jyoti, she thought and only managed not to lose it entirely because of the thing Jyoti had done before they parted. The light she’d
pressed into her skin, just above the wrist. If it goes out, she had said, then I’m in trouble.
But still it glowed.
Most likely it was going to be hers that winked out.
“I should hope it isn’t, Ms. Morrow. When a little meddler and her fool of a boyfriend and her two little friends make a mess like this, being that terrified is the very least they should feel, don’t you think?
After all, who knows what is going to happen to them now,” she said, in the brusque, withering tone of someone talking about an exam her students had failed.
Yet somehow that just made everything worse.
Mina watched the woman tidily step into the room, and shut the door, and felt her insides clench, then try to shrink back.
As if they could get away from this horrible threat, even as the rest of her refused to.
Of course, it refused to—Bram was here.
Bram was in front of her, already snarling. “The only thing that’s going to happen here is you being torn apart,” he said,
teeth bared. So razor-sharp looking that even she felt a trickle of fear over them.
But Hargreaves didn’t seem fazed at all. She waved one thin hand.
“Goodness me. Do put those fangs away, Mr. St. James. Or should I address you by your given name? Of Ember, is it not? The
Areifen sect that hails from the endless stairs? Though of course I know sect and endless stairs are such clumsy words for the where and who and what of Calabaraia. I try my best, but I am only human,” she said, then spread
her hands.
As if to say: It is what it is.
And even stranger, she went to her desk. She passed right by them both and went to the one drawer in it. Took out what looked
like a pipe, small and neat as a pin, and clamped it between her teeth, to light. And she did light it, too. She puffed on
it and leaned back against the windowsill behind her.
As if they were just here for a friendly chat.
Which was still deeply unsettling to Lili. But now it seemed unsettling in a slightly different way. And she knew Bram was feeling the same thing. He didn’t lunge again, despite how close Hargreaves now was. Just a narrow desk between them, nothing at all really.
It should have been easy.
Instead, it seemed suddenly absurd.
“Now,” Hargreaves said, as she settled with her pipe. “Are you going to tell me what this little escapade is about? I would
assume Ms. Morrow is once more the self I suspected she was and set on her usual nonsense. But I can assure you, you will
not find any help in breaking any barriers here. And I would advise you, as I tried to before, to not seek them. Somehow,
I doubt the only thing that happened to you was you mysteriously disappeared.”
After which, the unsettling feeling shifted again.
Now it was only 20 percent terror and 80 percent something else. Something that felt like dawning realization. Though Bram
still tried to protest. “Of course she didn’t. She was killed. By you,” he said, furious enough that she let her hand close
around his arm, as calmly as she could manage.
Though her voice sounded tense when she spoke. Tense and faintly despairing, as if everything was falling apart in ways she
just couldn’t fully fathom yet. “No, I wasn’t, Bram,” she said, and now he turned his head, eyes flashing.
“But she knows.”
“It doesn’t matter. She didn’t do it.”
“What? Just because she’s talking like this?”
He gestured at Hargreaves—but it was a half-hearted thing now.
And she could see the conviction was gone from his eyes.
He let it sink in, long before Hargreaves cut through their argument. “So that’s why you’re here. You think I killed you,” she said, so amused sounding about it that it made Bram blush. Even in this shadowy room, she could see it all over his face, and knew it was on hers, too.
“No,” Lili said. “No we don’t think that anymore. I’m sorry.”
“You should be. What a silly thing to think, when I spent so much of my time trying to keep you safe. It never pays to try
the patience of the sort of people who want to keep magic all to themselves here.”
So that’s what all her meanness was about, she thought, heart sinking even further than it already had. Trying to say without directly saying, warn without directly
warning, show regard for Calabaraia without directly showing it. Instill in all of us a deep respect, at all costs.
“You love them. The beings who live there,” she said, and suddenly those stern gray eyes were soft and kind. Relieved, it
seemed, that she could finally say.
“Of course I do, dear one.”
“It’s what the magical authorities do that you hate.”
“Always. Always.” She looked away, as if seeing all the words she had long wanted to say. Before turning back, resolved. “It