Chapter 12 Forsooth’s Magic
Forsooth’s Magic
Present Day
Malcroix Gardens
Malcroix Bones Academy
Eye of Ra, why had I agreed to let Graham come along with us to this stupid thing?
Saying yes to him had mostly been reflex, and part of my poor attempt at camouflage, as I’d been trying very hard to convince him I was fine, everything was fine, and I was reacting to the news about Alaric completely normally.
It was also because, I realized later, I’d been trying desperately hard not to talk to Bones.
I’d been less successful at controlling that impulse the following morning, when, at roughly seven-thirty in a different class, something possessed me to try and talk to him again.
I tentatively reached my mind for his in the early part of our Ancient Rituals class, one of the many electives I shared with him for some inexplicable reason.
I can only excuse it by saying that one, I hadn’t slept, and two, I’d spent the entire previous day and night trying to find out anything I could about Alaric, and I’d come up with exactly nothing.
Well, not nothing, but nothing that told me anything about how much danger he was in, where he might be now, or what his father or others in Dark Cathedral might be doing to him.
I mostly heard gleeful speculation around his mental state, rumors of a death in the Greythorne family, whispers that he’d done something illegal and gotten himself expelled, gossip about a witch he’d supposedly gotten pregnant, a sexually transmitted disease, and a possible drug problem.
I even tried reading a number of people, in addition to eavesdropping and asking questions.
I used a few spells I’d practiced with Alaric over the summer, specifically those for concealing mind-reading and mental pushes.
Unfortunately, those hadn’t yielded anything, either.
No one seemed to actually know anything, not even the other royals.
That left Bones.
Even so, I don’t know what possessed me to go there with him. It’s not like I hadn’t tried a few dozen times after the night of Eleusínia Myst?ria.
Is he all right? I’d whispered nearly silently at his mind. Do you know what really happened? Why his father came for him?
Silence.
Bones sat two rows ahead of me, back straight, his face as pale and gaunt-looking as it had been since that day on the carriage. If anything, he looked significantly worse. It was like something was slowly consuming him from the inside.
Bones, I sent next, exasperated. Can you please just talk to me for two seconds? You know I care about him. Can’t you tell me anything?
I waited for a few more beats of my heart, holding my breath.
I have no one else to ask. If you knew enough to tell me not to react, then you must know––
A hard, glass-like shield slammed down over my magic.
I sucked in a shocked breath, and the sound fell on deadened air, even inside my own mind.
It was the absolute strangest feeling I can recall magically, at least up to that minute.
It felt like someone had dropped a soundproof shell over my entire body, leaving me inside to rail against the thick walls, unable to hear even myself.
The shell remained all through class.
I could listen to the class lecture, and to the other students ask questions, but I couldn’t talk. Professor Wragnus, whom I normally watched in fascination as he worked, partly due to the bizarre symbols that flickered in his magical aura, looked as two-dimensional and flat as a cartoon character.
I couldn’t even smell his pipe, which was both a blessing and a curse.
Wragnus was known for that pipe. It positively reeked.
He regularly smoked it all through class, and it emitted thick, dark-green smoke that dribbled off the edges and pooled below his desk, usually choking out the first few rows of students by the end of class.
It was why no one sat there, no matter how interested they might be in seeing the details of his precise ritual work up close.
Bones had cut me off from my magic totally.
Moreover, he’d silenced me with the same spell.
I had absolutely no doubt that it had been him.
I doubted anyone else in there could have done it, apart from maybe Wragnus himself.
When the professor finally wrapped up for the day, knocking his pipe against a large clay ashtray and grinning at us from behind his long, wavy black hair, Bones immediately rose to his feet.
I stared at him, half in disbelief, as he scooped up his notes and two ritual textbooks, stuffed them into his bag, slung the strap over his shoulder, and walked out without giving me so much as a glance.
A few seconds after he disappeared through the door, the shell lifted.
I’d sat there, gasping, probably looking like I was having a heart attack, but no one stopped to ask.
I got a few strange looks as I got myself back under control, but the room emptied out too quickly for me to spend much time thinking about it.
I rose to my feet around the same time Professor Wragnus did, scooping up my own books and stuffing them in my leather satchel before I headed for the door.
My face had been burning. I’d been angry, mostly, but also on the verge of tears. I couldn’t really catalogue everything I felt, but powerless, frustrated, enraged, and humiliated figured in there somewhere, too.
I nearly ran him down right then.
I wanted to scream at him, to ask him why he thought I had no right to know what happened to the one of my dearest friends.
I tried instead to take a step back, to think about it the way Alaric would.
Alaric could be spookily strategic.
He understood psychology in a way that came harder for me, and he rarely didn’t get what he wanted from people as a result.
I suspected that was true even for Bones.
While I didn’t know exactly what Alaric would do to convince Bones, I knew he likely wouldn’t run at him head-on, and demand the information or help he wanted.
He wouldn’t come at him from the front at all, but would look for some way around, through a back door.
I tried to decide whether I had any leverage over him at all.
Offering Bones another deal with his magic seemed too obvious. If he wanted that from me, he would have found some excuse to approach me already.
If I could figure out why he’d looked so awful lately, that might be a way in.
Alaric affirmed the story I’d heard about Bones the previous year, that he’d been sick as a child and started school late as a result.
Was he sick again? Was that why he looked so terrible?
Whatever it was, it hadn’t kept him from school, or the Skyhunt team, which had their first match the coming Sunday.
I’d seen his name on the starting roster, next to Graham’s.
I also considered going the opposite direction and making myself a problem.
Bones obviously wanted me to keep quiet about Alaric.
What if I didn’t keep quiet about Alaric?
What if I refused to, unless he gave me real information?
He couldn’t follow me around the school throwing stasis shields over me (I figured out the spell he’d used against me in the library, later that night).
Not without getting in trouble with teachers and the administration, at least. What if I just started asking inconvenient questions about Dark Cathedral, the Priest, and Alaric? Loudly?
Say, in the Valarian dining hall during meals?
Did my discretion matter enough to him that he’d actually tell me something?
In the end, I didn’t do that. Not right away, at least.
I told myself I’d wait a few days first, see if Alaric came back on his own.
Risking a big scene, even if I warned Bones beforehand, would be a last resort.
I could possibly offer him a better deal first. My magic, if he wanted it, or possibly something more open-ended, if it turned out he was open to negotiating.
If that didn’t work, then yes, I’d find a pain point he wouldn’t ignore.
One week. If Alaric wasn’t back by Monday, I’d give Bones a choice.
In the meantime, the Second Year’s Gathering was Friday, and I’d have a better chance of learning something there than just about anywhere, especially if most of my class got drunk, which I had every reason to believe they would.
Which was another big reason I didn’t particularly want Graham Strangemore hanging around. Honestly, though, bringing Graham along as an addition to our overall friend group shouldn’t have been a problem. It shouldn’t have been any kind of issue at all.
It seemed fine at first.
I wore the dress the designer we hired in Bonescastle designed for me, with only minimal input on my part.
Mir insisted that’s how it was done for big events in Magique.
You didn’t pick out an outfit. You hired a good Magical clothing designer, and let them use their magic and their artistic vision to come up with something for you.
The dress Michel made for me clung to my curves more than the styles I usually wore, with a low-backed, corset-style bodice, long sleeves of black lace, and a silk, black and forest-green pattern on the corset itself.
The skirts below flared out in a near-ballgown style, although I wasn’t sure if they’d call it that here.
Miranda called it a “vampire dress” and laughed in delight when she saw it.
She also made it clear she very much approved of Michel’s taste, and insisted on helping his staff pick out every one of my accessories: a black lace choker, black, high-heeled shoes with enchanted green stones across the buckles, black sheer stockings decorated with tiny green and silver stones, silver earrings with magicked, glowing, full moons dangling at the ends, a silver dragon bracelet that matched the earrings.
I hemmed and hawed about wearing my mother’s green crystal.