Chapter Two #3
“No.” Well, he certainly heard that. “I will seal the other doors. You need to get out of here.” He didn’t wait for her response and jogged down the rest of the stairs, but Maggie was close on his heels.
He stopped on the second-floor landing, his hand on the doorknob to the hall. “Don’t follow me, Maggie.”
Maggie stopped. She didn’t know Arthur Taliesin knew her name at all, and it startled her enough that she stared after him as he disappeared into the second-floor hall. She nearly followed him, resigning herself to putting up with his scowl and disdain, when she decided that he was right.
Something had happened in his lab that had exposed them all to this giant, disastrous pall. He was the one responsible, and he certainly didn’t seem to want her help. He could clean up his own mess. He seemed perfectly capable. Besides, she needed to check on her students.
They were gathered on the sweeping lawn in front of the building, huddled together with Dahlia’s students beneath the hawthorn where Maggie and Dahlia had eaten lunch just a few hours earlier.
“I counted forty-two. Eighteen of them are mine,” Dahlia said.
“It’s like herding cats trying to keep them all together. ”
“That’s all of them. There are twenty-four in my intro course.” Maggie leaned against the tree beside Dahlia, finally giving her heart a chance to slow down. When it no longer felt like it was going to beat out of her chest, she said, “You’ll never guess who came out of that pall.”
“I haven’t got a clue. Who would be dumb enough to let their students mess with magic dangerous enough to produce a pall?”
“Arthur Taliesin.” Maggie kept her voice low so none of the students milling around might grow interested in their conversation. Dahlia’s mouth dropped in shock.
“No way.” As if in confirmation, the doors to Ilex Hall crashed open and Taliesin spilled out onto the steps.
He was barely upright, but one of his slime-covered students, fortified by the sunshine and warm air, went over to help him down the stairs.
Taliesin waved him off, and Maggie didn’t even try to contain her eye roll.
Couldn’t the guy take help when it was offered?
Even at this distance, Taliesin looked rough.
Maggie had severely underestimated how much of the pall he’d breathed in.
His skin had gone from pale to slightly green, and he looked like he was about to lose his lunch at any moment.
These were classic symptoms of pall exposure, along with the fatigue clearly plaguing him.
Starting with Taliesin’s own students, a smattering of applause started up and swelled through the crowd. Maggie rolled her eyes again and Dahlia bristled. “Man saves the day from self-inflicted catastrophe,” Maggie muttered.
“Alert the media,” Dahlia finished, and Maggie flashed her friend a wicked grin.
Taliesin lifted a hand slowly in appreciation of the applause and finally took the assistance of another alchemy professor, who held him up as they limped toward the infirmary.
“It’s going to take time to clear out that pall,” Dahlia complained. “Everything is going to stink like ether and death.”
“At least your apartment is on the other side of town,” Maggie whined. “This thing is going to attract every wraith, ghoul, and banshee for miles. I’m never sleeping again.”
“I told you being able to walk to work was overrated.” Dahlia had, in fact, mentioned something of the sort.
Maggie leaned her head against the hawthorn tree, suddenly exhausted now that the imminent danger had passed.
Hopefully the pall would be nothing but a nuisance now.
Fantasmia—especially the ghouls, banshees, and wraiths that would be drawn to the otherworldly magic—would be more frequent, but there were protections against them.
Having the third floor cut off from the rest of the building during the rush to the end of the semester would be the worst of it.
A dissipation spell would have to be crafted, but it shouldn’t take more than a few days.
Her students had already scattered, their panic forgotten in the sunshine.
A game of Frisbee had picked up where it left off, and someone had started blasting music.
The sound had a tinny, far-off quality that told Maggie the student was using some kind of rune to amplify it but had misjudged the calculations. Whatever gets them to practice.
Maggie stared up at the windows of the third floor of Ilex Hall.
The pall was visible, giving the glass a deep purple tint.
Inside, the swirling unease of gas and dust and slime that made up the pall passed by the windows, illuminated by the faefire lights that flashed with the surge of magic.
The pall looked alive as it undulated through classrooms, offices, and labs.
When a particularly bright cloud moved by one window, she could just make out a rune on the glass, drawn in the same careful strokes she had seen in the hallway when Taliesin had stolen her chalk.
Each window, she now saw, held the same rune, drawn in the same careful hand.
She turned, just in time, to see Taliesin hobble into the building that housed the infirmary.