Chapter 27
Gwendolynne
“She did what?” Harrisford roars.
He hasn’t seen us. He’s standing with his back to us, unleashing his ire on some poor young coat-check clerk.
The freckled boy quails. “She—she already checked out her coat, sir.”
“Come on, Gwen,” Heloise whispers, tugging me away from the scene. She all but pushes me down the entrance steps to where the valet is waiting with her car.
“Do we need to wait for your mum?” I say, breathless. I know it’s foolish, but I’m half hoping I’ll get the chance to go back and confront that prick who kissed, then abandoned me on the dance floor.
“Nah. She usually grabs a hotel room in the city after attending functions like these.” Heli grabs the keys from the valet and slides into the driver’s seat. She leans over and speaks to me through the passenger window. “And don’t you even think about going back for him, G.” Her voice is stern.
I sigh, clutching my coat tight around me, and climb into the passenger seat.
Heloise’s ride is a sleek little sports car, all smooth lines and black leather and tasteful silver finishes.
As we zip through the city streets, I lean my head on the cool window, feeling the car’s judders right down to my bones.
Heli checks her reflection in the rearview mirror, then throws a glance at me. “Are you all right? What happened back there?”
I quickly explain to her what I’d learned about the surges since she’d given me the scrolls from her mother. About how Magecorp uses tethers to hold open the portals that allow them to harvest magic, and how someone is trying to sabotage Magecorp by making them lose control.
“So the surges are being caused by some external party?” Heli says, concentrating on the road.
“Yeah.” I frown. “I think so. I don’t know who yet, though. But after what your mum said tonight…I think they’re using people as tethers, Heli. And that’s why we’re seeing surge-related deaths.”
Heloise sucks a breath through her teeth. “Wow,” she says after a pause. “That’s messed up.”
“It is.” I sigh, frustrated. “It’s just—I feel like I’m stuck now. I’ve hit a dead end. We have a list of people who’ve died, but no way of telling who killed them.”
Heli’s mouth twists as she considers. “Maybe we should report it, G—”
“No!” I cut her off so abruptly that Heloise throws me a quick, surprised glance.
There’s a long, awkward pause during which Heli focuses back on the road and I slump into my seat.
“Are you gonna tell me what’s going on, Gwen?” she says eventually, smoothly swerving into the next lane to overtake a slow driver.
I hesitate. “Well, I…” I really should tell Heloise about Percy. “I kind of maybe stole a cat.”
“A cat.” Heli lifts both eyebrows. “You stole a cat?”
“Yeah. From Saint Gertrude’s.”
She gives a low whistle. “Well, shit, G. I’m impressed.” Heloise has been trying to get me to loosen up for almost seven years now.
“And Harrisford—he knows I did it.” The familiar feeling of dread slithers up my spine. “He’s threatened to tell Dean Kaur if I go to the police.”
If Harrisford reports my misdemeanor, then Percy will almost certainly be confiscated. And, despite the fact that Percy is mean to me ninety-five percent of the time, I’m growing irrationally fond of him. I will not—cannot—put him at risk.
It’s tough love, Hairless One, Percy murmurs sleepily. Sometimes one must be cruel to be kind.
I roll my eyes; he yawns, audibly, and then goes silent. It’s probably my tiredness he’s feeling, since from what I’ve read familiars channel their owners’ emotions, and I’m quite sure he—unlike me—has been sleeping the entire day.
But there was something else buried, hidden behind his fatigue. Something that sounded almost like…affection?
Heli’s voice cuts into my thoughts, jerking me from my reverie. “What a fucking bastard,” she says, referring to Harrisford.
I am in complete agreement.
She drives in silence for several minutes, frowning at the car in front of us. “What if we do some background research, then? See if there’s anything connecting the people who’ve died or gone missing.” Her brow creases. “Didn’t you say some of them worked for Magecorp?”
“They did. But I’m not sure those deaths are related.
According to Harrisford’s dad, the employees who went missing were trying to figure out who actually was behind the surges.
” It makes sense. It would be in Magecorp’s interest to stop the sabotage, because regulating the supply of magic is the basic foundation of the business.
Heloise steers the car onto the motorway and smoothly shifts up a gear. “Do you wanna look into it tonight, Gwen? We could take my mum’s list, crack open a bottle, and see if we can dig anything up?”
“I would, but…” Now I’m yawning. The smooth rumble of the car motor is lulling me into fatigue. Being up for so many hours last night is finally catching up to me. “First I need some sleep.”
I wake late the next morning, having overslept, and have to throw on my scrubs and pedal furiously to Saint Gertrude’s. Conall, Heloise, and I are rostered onto procedures today—doing things like dental cleans, stitch-ups, and other small operations that don’t require a sterile surgery theater.
Jenna Rutherford is just finishing up morning rounds when I burst into the prep room, shrugging on my white robes.
“Is everything okay, Chan?” she says, raising one heavily penciled eyebrow.
It’s out of character for me to be late to rounds. In every other part of my life, I’m a disaster—a clumsy, nonpunctual disaster—but when it comes to my work, I’m usually dead on time.
“Just catching up after a call-out the other night,” I mumble, and Jenna gives a curt nod.
“As I was saying,” she says, to the group. “We have a cat here with an abscess. Which normally is due to?”
“Cat bites,” says Heloise promptly. “From fighting.”
“Right,” Jenna says as we crowd around the cat’s cage. It’s a miserable-looking British Blue with a snarl of bloodstained, matted fur on his flank. “But what if I told you this cat is indoors only? And he lives alone?”
“Could he have escaped?” volunteers Conall a little nervously. He darts his gaze to the heavily tattooed Jenna and then back to the cat.
“Good thought, Peters. But the owner swears black and blue that didn’t happen.”
“What about a spider bite?” Heloise shudders; she hates spiders. “Or some other insect?”
Jenna purses her lips. “Could be…But I’ve not seen them look like this before. What else? Think, folks.”
I draw nearer to the bank of cages. The cat is crouching and obviously feeling poorly, but he lifts his chubby little lips and gives me a soft, plaintive meow. He has a magical aura about him, which is usual for a familiar, but his seems rather…extreme.
Plus, now that I’m closer, the dark staining on his fur doesn’t only look like blood. Yes, there’s dried blood there, but some of the markings look more like scorch marks.
“Magiphilia,” I say, more to myself than to Jenna. I raise my head and address the group. “I think it’s magiphilia. Except instead of expelling the excess magic, the cat’s body has just…walled it off.”
Jenna slaps her thigh. “Bingo! His magic levels are off the charts. There are burn marks on his fur. It’s an unusual presentation, but it fits. This cat’s just managed to sequester the magic into one part of his body. Good work, Chan.” She taps her strap.
There’s a ping, and Conall, Heloise, and I all check our own straps. Jenna’s given me an extra mark for diagnosing the British Blue.
After delivering the qílín foal, I’d already drawn ahead of Harrisford by three points, but I note, with some satisfaction, that I’m now ahead of him by four.
Good. The bitter, petty side of me wants to beat him even more, now that he’s shown his true colors and confirmed he’s an actual prick.
“Well, chaps,” Jenna says cheerily. “You get started on the procedures list. I’ll be back to check on your progress after lunch.”
An hour later, the three of us have anesthetized the cat and are preparing the abscess for lancing. Heloise is monitoring the anesthetic, and Conall is shaving the hair and cleaning the cat’s skin, while I scrub my hands and snap on a pair of gloves.
“Do you think the problem’s getting worse?” Conall says, dragging a disinfectant-soaked swab in outwardly spiraling circles. When he reaches the perimeter, he discards the swab and then picks up another. “Gary died from that surge, and though I can’t prove it now, I—I think he had magiphilia, too.”
Heloise and I shoot each other a look. “I think so,” I say.
So far, I’ve only discussed the actual magiphilia epidemic with Harrisford and Heloise.
And Harrisford and I are the only two Seamere students who know about the qílín.
Everyone else has seemed to swallow Professor Pickering’s assurances that the common room surge was a one-off.
I haven’t wanted to talk to anyone else about how widespread the problem seems, because in a world where there’s so much misinformation, it’s hard to know who to trust. But Conall lost Gary and I like Conall, so I decide now’s a good time to let him in on what we know.
Lowering my voice so that it’s drowned out by all the beeping equipment—I don’t want any passing staff to overhear what we’re saying—I explain.
“The media’s not reporting on it, but there’s been a definite spike in magiphilia cases all over the UK.
In animals and people. Related to random power surges. ”
Heloise taps the cat’s eyelids and checks his jaw tone to make sure he’s properly asleep.
“Yeah, my mum’s been looking into cases.
The incidence is definitely on the rise.
” The cat’s not quite deep enough, so Heli channels some magic from her familiar, Lightning, and uses it to top up the anesthesia machine.