Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
I settled into my tiny office connected to Professor Akhtar’s for my office hours on Wednesday, arranging my textbooks on my desk in preparation for any student who might come in.
I hoped someone would come see me.
I’d been the teaching assistant for Professor Akhtar for the entire year so far, and other than the week before midterms and final exams, when I was inundated and couldn’t answer questions fast enough, I never saw a soul.
I rubbed my ring finger on my right hand, where my ring from Grandfather usually sat, irritated at its absence. Professor Reynolds had told us to leave any jewelry behind today, as the spell we were learning in Quantitative Spellcraft reacted badly to worked metal. I had been grateful for the warning when one girl, who hadn’t removed her earrings, nearly tore her earlobes to get the metal out of her skin.
He set an essay on metal and its effect on spells involving poison oak components, due Friday.
I peered out the door and strained to hear any footsteps, but there was nothing. I sighed and pulled my notes toward me, getting a fresh paper to start on the essay. “Some plants fight back against the toxicity of metals,” I muttered, writing the equation for the breakdown of chloroplasts under the effect of iron.
Halfway through my essay, I found my mind wandering up two floors to where Aiden was keeping Moonbeam company.
As a group, we had decided that most of us didn’t have the heart to fake hunting the manducares in the forest. Brom and Bruce had volunteered, if we heard reports of any successes, to join the hunters and try to throw them off track.
Fortunately, nobody in the school had succeeded in finding a manducare.
We’d been approached by a few students for tips on how to find one, and we described our adventure, but it wasn’t like it was helpful to anyone. It had been a fluke, one that hopefully wouldn’t happen again.
“I wonder if there’s anything about manducares in my grimoire,” I said out loud, my voice startling me in the silence of my office. “If they are related to the ley line draining, or even rumored to be, then maybe they’d be mentioned in any spells from last time,” I reasoned. “When were the Dark Ages?”
I needed a history book for that, so I put a note on my office door— “Back in five minutes” —and trotted down the stairs to the library. I stood in front of the wall of books on history and flipped through a few of them until I got my answer.
Back upstairs in my office, I pulled my grimoire back toward me with hesitation. I’d never found anything that old in the book before. “Five hundred?” I muttered to myself, flipping pages. “The school didn’t even start until the sixteen hundreds!” Not for the first time, I wished there was some sort of index for the contents of the grimoire. Usually, I wanted a spell index, but today was a first for many things.
I skipped the beginning of the book, because I knew that things weren’t necessarily in the order that they were written. Spells that were the most used generally made their way up to the front of the book. Ones that I had written were all at the front, despite having used the pages at the back.
“Back, then?” I continued muttering to myself. “Since they’d be rarely mentioned or used.”
I found some interesting spells regarding hygiene and how to keep pests out of the house, and felt optimistic, but continuing to flip forward didn’t seem like it was the answer, because next were a bunch of spells on horticulture.
“Arg,” I exploded, dropping my forehead onto the book.
“I can come back at a better time,” said a timid voice from the doorway.
I shot up in my seat, my head whipping to face the door and a smile plastered onto my face. I hoped it didn’t look too wild. “No, no, please come in! You’re the perfect distraction.”
The girl was a first year student that I had seen in the first semester, Grace. She tentatively edged into the room and perched on the corner of the chair across from my desk, looking like she was going to run any second.
“What can I help you with?” I asked, feeling too much like I was trying to talk to a wild animal.
“I had some questions from my homework that I didn’t understand,” she said in a whisper, her gaze fixed on my desk.
“Great!” I said a little too enthusiastically, making her jump. I lowered my voice again, ashamed. “Show me the questions, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“It’s just difficult to understand what the ley lines are like when they’re not here,” Grace said.
I nodded sympathetically. “I get that. I’ll show you how to draw up a diagram to help you visualize better.”
“Thank you!” the girl exclaimed, her face lighting up like I had suggested something brilliant.
I suppose I had, to her. I smiled. “Let’s get you set up.”
Half an hour later, I was alone again, but happier now that I had helped someone else understand how the ley lines worked. I got to my feet and stretched, my hands in the small of my back. I’d been sitting at a funny angle so that I could see Grace’s work properly.
“I need to do something about that,” I said to myself. “Or else I’m going to need to invest in a heat pack spell.”
I sank back into my chair with a sigh and eyed my grimoire, annoyed. “Why couldn’t you have something useful ,” I muttered at it.
By the end of my office hours, I was a stressed-out mess. I had quickly scanned through the entirety of the grimoire’s main book and found nothing even related to the Dark Ages. My plan was to go through the hidden compartment once I reached Aiden’s room, but I wasn’t holding my breath.
My optimism was gone.
I didn’t bother shrinking my books before I made my way to the fourth floor and Aiden’s room. I was already feeling drained, and didn’t want to risk the headache from using too much magical energy.
Maybe I should take a nap before dinner?
I sighed. I still had my essay to finish and it wasn’t like I’d have time tomorrow, what with our field trip to Atlantis.
My stomach did a complicated flip at the thought of our field trip. So much could go wrong. We’d have Professor Akhtar with us, of course, and Professor Puddlemoan, the extreme sports education teacher, just in case. It was the “in case” that worried me.
In case of what?
Dangerous creatures?
Magic going haywire?
An attack of some sort?
I shivered, pausing to sit on a couch in the third floor foyer to calm down.
There was no reason to panic. The school was taking every precaution.
I wasn’t sure why that didn’t make me feel better.
I got to my feet in a huff. “Sitting here and moping about it isn’t going to make me feel any better,” I said sternly, drawing curious looks from a couple fourth year students.
I ignored them and headed up the stairs.
Aiden greeted me with open arms, Moonbeam twining around his ankles. “Hi,” I said, feeling my stress leaving me as I hugged him, his arms enfolding me and crushing me against his body. I never felt as safe as I did in his embrace.
“Tomorrow’s going to be fine, right?” I asked.
“Of course it will be,” Aiden said confidently. “You trust Professor Akhtar, right?”
I nodded.
“And you should trust in your abilities.” He fixed me with a glare, and I blushed. “Rhiannon is going to visit Moonbeam to make sure she doesn’t rebel and run amok while we’re gone. If we get stranded on the other side of the world, Lilia and Hazel have agreed to have her stay over, while the dragons go to Brom’s room.”
“Do you think that’s really necessary?” I asked anxiously, biting my lower lip.
“No.” Aiden rubbed my arms slowly, the movement soothing. “But if we didn’t have a plan for that, you’d be worried the entire time we were gone.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“How were your office hours?”
“Fine.” I shrugged. “Finished half the essay set by Professor Reynolds and scoured my grimoire for mentions of manducares.”
“I’m guessing no luck?” he asked with a grimace.
“None yet, but I haven’t searched the hidden compartment.”
“Why don’t you do that while we cuddle on the bed? You can give me half while you look through the other half.”
I beamed at him. “Great suggestion!”
We made a little nest of his blankets and pillows on the bed. I curled up between his legs, resting my chin on his knee and flipping through my half of the spells on the mattress.
Despite not finding anything of use relating to the Dark Ages, the ley lines vanishing, or the manducares, I felt infinitely better after a long snuggle session.
I needed to bottle up whatever it was about Aiden that rejuvenated me. At the very least, I should study it.
Was it his warmth?
His presence?
I snuggled deeper into his embrace and he kissed the top of my head absent-mindedly.
It must be his kisses, I decided, my eyes drifting closed.
That’ll be hard to capture.