Chapter 4
Gwendolynne
Fortunately, since no one else at Seamere is as nosy as Harrisford-fucking-Briggs, I manage to get Percy safely inside my dorm room before encountering anyone else. He tumbles out from his knitted prison, clawing my stomach with his hind limbs as he does so.
“Ouch!” I cry, but Percy doesn’t seem to notice, or he doesn’t care.
He just darts under the bed, navigating stacks of paper and odd socks and embarrassing amounts of dust. I drop to the floor and flatten myself, peering into the darkness—he’s crouching in the corner, blanketed by shadows, every now and then emitting a shower of sparks.
Figuring he might be hungry, I rustle through my bar fridge for something potentially suitable. It’s too late to get any actual cat food tonight, but I’ll go first thing tomorrow. In the meantime we’ll just have to make do.
The inside of the fridge is dark; the magelight has long since blown and I haven’t bothered to replace it.
All I find is some wrapped cheese, hardening at the edges, and a half-empty carton of soy milk.
My snacks drawer isn’t much better—it’s mostly cereal, and things that are easy to stuff into my mouth when studying, like nuts and pretzels and an old pack of leathery beef jerky my mother once bought me “for the iron.” Finally, I scrounge up an old tin of tuna-for-one and empty it into a bowl.
I set it down on the floor beside the bed. Percy vehemently ignores me. He also ignores the beef jerky I toss at him, and the piece of cheese that I’d pulled out in desperation.
“Seriously?” I ask him, incredulous. “You don’t like any of this?
” But of course there’s no answer. The Office of Magical Animals at the Ministry is the only entity that issues permits allowing a person to keep a familiar.
And it’s only once they’ve granted one that they’ll perform the bonding ritual enabling direct communication between a permit holder and their pet.
I already know I’ll never be able to get a permit. Seamere rules forbid it, first of all. And besides, there’s no way I could afford one.
Plus, I don’t even know if the Mason-Prices will bother to cancel Percy’s current permit.
Probably not, since they’re so loaded with money, they wouldn’t care about getting the partial refund, especially now they think he’s dead.
To me, without a permit, Percy will always be nothing more than a regular old cat.
And he’ll stay bonded to the horrible Magecorp CEO, Mr. Nathaniel Price.
Suddenly, something occurs to me, and my blood runs cold. All my extremities feel numb. I clutch at my face, barely feeling it.
The Prices think Percy is dead. But Percy is not dead. He’s very much alive. And humans can communicate telepathically with their animal familiars. Which means…
“Percy,” I say, dropping back down to the floor. “Whatever you do…Don’t speak to your master, yeah? Nathaniel thinks you’re dead. In fact, he wants you to be dead. If you say anything, they’ll figure it out and send someone after you. But if you stay quiet…”
Percy continues to stare out of the darkness at me, his one eye glowing a reflective green. After several drawn-out seconds, the eye disappears briefly as he gives me a slow blink, and I know he’s understood.
Letting loose a relieved sigh, I push myself off the floor and then flop into the worn seat of my desk chair. I lean my elbows on my desk for a second, massaging my forehead, dreading what’s coming next.
Most of the other students, the ones whose families can afford to send them to Seamere without needing scholarships, can buy unlimited stores of magic. To them, buying magic is no more onerous than stocking up on pens, or parchment, or textbooks, or spare robes.
Me? I have to purchase the bare minimum whenever it’s affordable and then diligently ration it out. I need magic for everything I do: studying, sitting exams, working shifts at Saint Gertrude’s…even charging the battery of my strap.
While there are some smaller companies that sell magic, Magecorp and Linksphere are the two main distributors, and they have a complete choke hold on the market.
They harvest it. They control the supply chains that circulate it around the globe.
And they trade the familiars that allow humans to more efficiently channel and store atmospheric magic.
They haven’t started breeding them yet—but everyone says it’s just a matter of time.
It’s a massive, massive industry, which we learned in Economics of Magic 101 is actually a good thing.
Magecorp—headed by Nathaniel Price and Harrisford’s father—and Linksphere are two of the biggest employers of magical humans worldwide.
And while stores of magic are pricey, the economies of scale mean that without these two corporations regulating the market, magic would be even more prohibitively expensive.
I don’t understand it fully, but it makes sense.
The quaint little corner stores that sell magic do so at a far higher cost. And as much as I wish I could support them, I simply can’t, not when they sell at such inflated prices.
Here on campus, I’m forced to buy it online, or from the Magecorp and Linksphere vending machines in a pinch.
So I can’t really complain about the market when I, like so many in the magical community, am one of the cogs that keep it turning—even if Magecorp does result in unfortunate side effects like the existence of Harrisford Briggs.
Sighing, I push my sleeves up to get to work, ignoring my clammy palms. Whenever I can’t afford to buy magic, I have to replenish my supplies by using an extremely obscure rationing spell, which makes what I have stretch further.
Back in first year, I had to trawl through some pretty complex magical textbooks to figure out how to do it.
Since it’s so horrible, most people don’t bother—they’d rather just buy more. That’s not a luxury I have, however.
Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve studied medicine.
The truth is, magical doctors need less magic to do their jobs than we vets do.
Something about the way we treat so many species drains our magic more quickly, more thoroughly.
But those thoughts are fleeting, and honestly far between.
Even on the hardest days, I wouldn’t change it.
I chose to go into vet school—even though both my pay and my status in magical society will be lower than other careers—because I love animals. Because I want to help.
Also, honestly…humans are disgusting.
I unwrap a scalpel and close my eyes, beginning to mutter the incantation, one that I know so well I could probably recite it in my sleep.
But I’m interrupted by a loud moan and then the unmistakable whack of a headboard banging against the wall.
The walls here are paper-thin, a fact that I’ve become uncomfortably aware of since Bridie Masters, my neighbor, started hooking up with her new boyfriend, Danny Wong.
Damn it! They’ve broken my concentration, and after everything that’s happened today…I’m exhausted.
“Masters! Wong!” I thump the wall between our rooms. “Keep it down!”
There’s a pause, and a giggle. “You could always join us, Gwen!” Bridie’s singsong voice floats across the plaster.
I wrinkle my nose. “Just quieten down, will you?”
In fine Bridie form, she responds by moaning even louder. I glower at the wall before powering up my strap, then turning the volume up high. Maybe it’ll drown out the noise, at least partially.
The familiar buzz of the nightly news spills into the dank air of my dorm, and I push up my sleeves again, which have annoyingly fallen down.
“—tonight’s charity gala, which was being held by Magecorp CFO Darghan Briggs to raise funds for the Society of Magical Veterans—”
My ears prick up at the mention of Harrisford’s dad, and I stare down at the screen. A charity gala? Was that where Harrisford was headed tonight?
The news anchor is wearing a salmon pink jacket and a tiny downturned frown. “The entire museum has been cordoned off in an attempt to identify the source of the explosion, though eyewitnesses say it seemed to originate from multiple locations at once.”
A face I recognize, TV presenter Samuel Sloane, flashes onto the screen. He’s wearing a large furry sort of hat that has been scorched beyond recognition. “It was my hat at first,” he rants, pointing at the blackened lump atop his head. “It seemed to start here, and then, just…boom!”
The camera cuts to a scene outside the Natural History Museum, which has been barricaded behind yellow tape and is crawling with journalists and police.
I sit forward in my chair, my heart thumping.
A field reporter stands before the camera, holding a large gray magephone emblazoned with the news station’s logo.
“While a number of suspects, including several high-level members of the Magical Liberation Organization, have been brought in for questioning,” the reporter says, “no group has yet come forward to claim responsibility for this act of terror, which so far has resulted in zero casualties.”
I blow out a breath. Zero casualties. That’s good. Just some random explosion that affected a bunch of rich people who don’t concern me in the slightest.
Not that I care what happens to Harrisford.
Chewing my lip, I frown at my strap screen.
The fact the authorities are questioning the Magical Liberation Organization is interesting.
The MLO, an extremist group that actively works against the Ministry, are activists who want to dismantle the tight regulations on magic; their mission statement is that everyone should have equal access to it.
While they haven’t been too active in recent years, in the past they’ve been known for agitating, for disrupting, sometimes even for violence. Years ago, the Ministry officially labeled them a terrorist organization.
I shake my head. I have no idea why the MLO would try to blow up a charity gala, but right now I need to focus on my own problems. Turning my attention back to my rationing spell, I prepare to make the first cut with the scalpel. Slowly, I unwrap the blade, then shimmy my jeans down past my thighs.
Sometimes I do my forearms, but my legs are easier to hide—so most of the cuts I make are there, on top of the already present, unsightly mess of scars.
I’d started doing this for practical reasons, but after a while it became routine.
A sort of anchor to my anxiety. Often, the pain helps me to stop thinking—even if only for a few moments—about the stress of vet school.
About my family and how much I miss them.
About how they’re on the brink of losing the restaurant they’ve owned for as long as I can remember.
Or about how, since they’ve sunk all their money into the business and put none toward a pension, they’ll end up destitute…unless I can win.
Each year, whoever comes first at Seamere is automatically offered a lucrative graduate role at the Ministry’s Office of Magical Animals.
To be honest, if I could choose anything, I’d probably prefer an internal medicine internship, but the low pay wouldn’t be enough.
Whereas with the Ministry job, I’d be able to help haul my parents back from impending bankruptcy.
It’s why I want to beat Harrisford. Scratch that, it’s why I need to beat Harrisford. The thought steels my resolve. We’re weeks away from exams; if I want to win, there are no two ways about it: I need more magic. I inhale. Exhale. Then continue.
The news I leave running in the background. I’m only half listening, and there isn’t much more information—just some interviews of patrons who’d been at the gala. But neither Harrisford’s father nor Harrisford himself shows up on-screen.
Again, I’m interrupted, because there are the sounds of footsteps running down the hall outside. A scream. Then—a bang. Another bang. And a shout. Percy streaks out from under the bed and leaps into my lap, trembling.
What the hell is going on? I need to complete this ritual without being continuously interrupted.
Clenching my teeth so hard my masseter muscles ache, I try to ignore the noises.
But when the footsteps and shouts and bangs and screams don’t stop, I fling the scalpel down, tug up my jeans, scoop Percy up with one arm, and cautiously crack open the door.
The corridor is dark. The fluorescent magelights have gone out. There are more distant shouts and thumps and something that sounds like…an explosion?
“Gwen! Gwen!” Pen Ferguson rushes up, their generous curves swathed in a purple dressing gown, their hair in rollers, their feet shod in fuzzy slippers. “You’d better come—”
I’m about to ask why when Pen cuts me off. “The animals are going wild,” they say, panting. “There’s been an explosion.”
I tear after Pen, following them to Heywood Hall’s enormous common room.
We arrive to find a scene of total pandemonium.
Students are crammed in there, many of them already in nightwear.
It’s where most of them hang out before bed, chatting and socializing and playing games over their straps.
Not me, though. I’m normally shut up in my room, studying.
Those who had brought their familiars into the common room are struggling to keep ahold of their pets.
There’s Danny Wong, already out of Bridie’s room, wrestling with his carpet python, Artemis.
Isla Ennis is grappling with her flapping, squawking eclectus parrot, and Conall Peters is there too, pleading with his guinea pig, Gary, who is glowing like a firework and throwing off sparks.
Outside, Heloise Chapman is being dragged along by her unicorn, Lightning.
Lightning is usually stabled overnight, but somehow he’s managed to burst out of his pen and is bolting across a paddock.
Even though it’s nighttime I can see that Heloise’s skin is flushed, her braids flying, her eyes wide with panic.
What is going on? I take in the scene, my mouth falling open. First the museum explosion, and now this? What on earth is actually happening?
I startle when I hear the voice echoing through my head.
This is what happens, the voice says, sounding weary and jaded and thoroughly bored, when there is simply too much magic.