Chapter 10 Strange Encounters
Strange Encounters
Present Day
Malcroix Mansion
Malcroix Bones Academy
Nothing happened that night, when Alaric and I got back to our dorms. I don’t know what I’d expected to happen. Someone waiting for me in the Valarian foyer? Someone waiting for me in my dormitory bedroom? Whatever I’d feared, it never came to pass.
Nothing happened the next day, either, which was a Saturday.
Or the day after that.
I saw Alaric both of those days.
We’d exchanged looks across the expanse of tables both days, at several different meals, and Alaric even wrote me a note in our made-up code, telling me that everything was fine on his end, that he’d heard other royals gossiping about the cut-off transmission but no one seemed to know the cause.
He assured me that no one had acted any differently towards him, and he hadn’t heard from his father, so he guessed we hadn’t been successfully traced, even if they picked up on our attempts to pirate their signal.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. I’d been wearing my mother’s crystal, and Alaric’s chimaeras were shockingly good.
Still, I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t get the panic or that feeling of having been caught out of my mind.
I imagined eyes on me, and couldn’t tell if the feeling came from paranoia, or if I was picking up on something real.
It wasn’t until Sunday night that I finally stumbled across a real distraction, around eight o’clock Sunday evening.
An official-looking drakai wearing a black cap flew through the window at Frumpy’s, and handed me a thick, rolled-up parchment.
I’d received my first letter from Archie.
He’d written me fifteen pages in his small, mostly-legible script, all about the Sanctum Occulus and his life there, the food they served, the other Obeah students, his teachers, Valor and his wife, Esalia, a friend he’d made named Rosti, his fascination with primals and monoceri and wings and mirrors, the odd buildings and furniture of the Sanctum itself, his favorite teachers and classes.
Interspersed throughout were at least twenty questions about me, demands that I write him back immediately, demands that I tell him everything now that I was allowed, and disbelief that I’d been in Magique all this time and no one told him.
I read the whole thing three times.
The relief I felt at reading his words was beyond anything I could describe.
My brother’s distinctive way of speaking, even just his handwriting, brought up more emotion in me than I knew how to deal with at first. The familiarity of his mind, his odd quirks of language and humor, his obsessively intense nature when it came to practically everything––all of it brought up tremendous relief, even as it made me miss him horribly.
Aiding the relief side of things, I was a little shocked to realize he was happy. I could tell he was happy. He was excited, happy, nervous, relieved, fascinated, and completely entranced by everything he’d encountered so far in Magique.
I laughed involuntarily in parts, and read whole paragraphs aloud to Luc and Jolie, who laughed with me. The three of us were studying together in Frumpy’s when the letter came.
Afterwards, I’d written him back even more pages, telling him everything I could think of about Malcroix and Magical London and things I thought might interest him from my first year in Magique.
I described the test I’d taken in that strange room under the Parliament Building, the invisible city of Bonescastle, my alchemy and theurgy classes, all about flying and wearing wings, my friends, Wraith, my first Skyhunt match, my hopelessness at magical combat, the rituals I was working on, my monocerus, Luc’s lemur, Forsooth’s bear.
It was random and all over the place, but I knew he wouldn’t mind.
I stopped only when my hand-cramped, sometime after one o’clock in the morning, still sitting in Frumpy’s, my tea gone cold and my friends long gone to bed.
I rolled up my twenty-odd pages and used gold wax and the Malcroix crest to seal it, then sent it off with one of the Malcroix drakai before heading back to Valarian College to feed Wraith and pass out.
By the time I crawled into bed, it must’ve been after two o’clock.
I slept like the dead, for the first time since that night on The Eyrie.
Luckily for me, my first class on Monday didn’t start until after ten o’clock.
I managed to sleep until nearly nine, and because my first class was Theurgy 2.0, held in Auditorium Four on the basement levels of Malcroix Mansion, I could still grab an egg and cheese sandwich from the lobby kiosk on my way in, along with a cup of truly decadent and deliciously strong coffee.
My good mood only wavered when I saw a shock of platinum hair on my way down the aisle, but I managed to recover quickly for once, partly from sheer familiarity.
I knew he was in my class. He seemed to be in all of my classes but two, so while I had to see him even more than I had the year before, at least I was growing used to it.
After my night with Alaric on The Eyrie, I was determined to follow Bones’s lead and not so much as glance at him in any room or class we shared.
I definitely wouldn’t pay any attention to who he might be sitting with, whether it was Alaric, one of those three neanderthal royals who still shadowed him everywhere, or whatever witch caught his fancy for that particular hour, day, or week.
I was so lost in my determination to ignore him as I deliberately chose a seat at the very front of class, I didn’t realize I’d sat right next to someone else I knew.
Nor did I notice, in those seconds while I situated my coffee, sandwich, notebook, quill, and satchel, that the person in question was talking to me.
“Leda? LEDA. Hey… psst.”
I flinched. The way he said it, a little too loud, and a touch impatient, made me think it wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get my attention.
I turned my head, reddening when I saw who it was.
Graham Strangemore was another person I hadn’t seen much of since the Eleusínia Myst?ria dance.
I hadn’t any desire for a second date after that first one, although he’d persistently asked, even after the winter break.
I couldn’t have said why I told him no, not exactly, since none of what happened that night had been Graham’s fault.
I really hadn’t been much for dating at all for the second half of last year, although I’d gone to a few dinners I’d been invited to, and one movie that was a double date with Miranda, the same one she couldn’t seem to forgive herself for.
I went with the roommate of some bloke she met in her Offensive and Defensive Magic practical, and yes, it ended up in a bit of a wrestling match between me and my date, who, it turned out, believed all the stories about hybrids being “insatiable sex maniacs,” which Alaric had warned me about.
Our “disagreement” only got resolved when I cursed him into a deep sleep, causing him to slump and drool on the chair next to mine.
Mir, of course, had been absolutely mortified.
She fell over herself apologizing for the rest of that night, after I managed to talk her down from lighting my date’s bollocks on fire.
When her date complained about me hexing his mate, Mir hexed him a face full of seeping boils, maybe because she couldn’t bring herself to hex an unconscious person.
Then she hooked her arm through mine and let me steer us both out of the theater.
Draken, when he heard the story the next day, had been so filled with rage, I’d actually worried he’d attack one or both of the mages for real.
He hadn’t, but since then, dating hadn’t been high on my list of priorities.
I’d seen Graham out in Bonescastle with a few other witches, and at a spring dance with Lily Fenrix, who’d also been in our flying course, so I figured he’d moved on.
It’s not like he had any shortage of admirers.
As the resident Skyhunt star, he pretty much had his pick, at least from the witches who were fans of the sport, or fans of him specifically, or both.
Now he smiled at me from one row back, and I immediately felt my guard go up.
“What’s up, Shadow?” he asked, smiling. His white, hawk-like bird primal perched on his shoulder, staring at me with ruby-red eyes. “I like your top.”
I glanced down at the lavender blouse I wore, startled.
While it was one of my favorites, there was nothing particularly special about it. It was one of the many Alaric had picked out for me, so I supposed it must be flattering. Even so, I almost wondered if he was taking the piss.
“Thanks.” I looked up. “You have a decent summer break?”
“Can’t complain,” he said, grinning wider.
“I spent most of it playing as a alternate for The Bánánach.” At my probably-blank stare, he added, “My father’s Skyhunt team?
Dublin, you know. That took up most of my time, and hanging out in the Maldives and Ibiza for the after-parties.
You going to this second year’s thing on Friday? ”
I hesitated again, this time thrown by the abrupt change in topic. It hit me again, how on edge I was, and how completely out of step I felt with most of the students here.
“I’ll probably make an appearance.” I forced a smile, trying my best to sound as lofty and light as he did. “I’ve been persistently sold on the idea that I simply must go and at least check it out. By Mir, mostly.”
“You mean Miranda Rook?”
Something about the way he asked made my hackles go up slightly, but I only nodded.
I’d noticed a number of guys were strange about Miranda this year.
I had absolutely no idea why, since they were all over her during first year.
I guessed it was because she was outspoken and fearless and gorgeous and not bloke-obsessed, and, unlike me, not quite academic enough to have that as an excuse.
She’d also turned a lot of them down by now, maybe Graham, too.
I wished like hell she’d notice Luc one of these days.