Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
The air at midday was already stifling, and so dry I could barely breathe.
It figured that I would be in Hell for a heat wave.
Max and I trudged across the campus grounds, cracks running through the earth where it had been baked by the sun.
Max adjusted his hat to keep himself shaded.
Short brown hair peeked out beneath it, curling where it had gotten a little too long.
Already I had the crushing feeling that I was out of my depth.
I knew what Robetresse hoped for in my coming back here.
That I’d settle into my old routines again, take back up my research on how people used their objects, and finish my PhD.
Take my position on the council. Practice Magic with Max.
But I didn’t have it in me to return to anthropology.
For a long time, I had loved my discipline, lived in this sense of awe of humanity, how we persisted through all the changing ages of the world.
I admired our grit and determination, reveled in humanity’s capacity for love and art, culture and language.
But over time, my study of humanity just took me further from people.
The more I saw, the more I started to experience a nagging sense of powerlessness in a world that felt like it was falling apart, a lingering hopelessness every time I turned on the news.
I wanted to love people, but how could you love a world like this?
Max turned toward me, the corners of his mouth tugging down. “Already wanting to bolt, huh?”
I knew that he wasn’t happy with me and that, while I didn’t miss anthropology or Magic, he certainly did.
My mind kept returning to the girl in Maritza’s cottage. The dead look in her eyes, the bemused twitch of her lips. The whole thing sent dread squirming to the bottom of my toes. I wanted to grab my stuff, grab Bear, turn around, and drive back home.
I hugged my torso. “Let’s not pretend this is your run-of-the-mill research project.
Danica Stewart didn’t just kill Maya Hagood.
She had thirty-six stab wounds. Whatever this spell is, it made her brutalize her.
It just makes you wonder … if she did that to someone she cared about, what would she do to us? ”
His eyes said everything his mouth wouldn’t. It’s what you always do, isn’t it? Run away.
I willed my fingers to stop shaking. I knew it would come to this, that we’d have to talk again.
But as I looked around at this place, at the rusted metal Art building, and the creaking old barn they’d repainted and converted into the cafeteria, I couldn’t stop all the memories from rushing back.
The fights with Max, his brow furrowing in confusion after he finally said, “I love you,” and I said nothing.
The silent accusation that always accompanied it. Why isn’t it enough?
The day Dr. Robetresse called me into her office to explain that my brother had taken his own life—that guilt had followed me everywhere I went.
I was Aaron’s big sister. I should’ve protected him.
Everything in this place just kept reminding me of him.
Showing Aaron around during his first week of college, moving him into his dorm room, us piling into my pickup to drive home for Sunday family dinner.
Then afterward—the RA telling me I needed to pack up his dorm room so another student could move into it. Sitting around the empty dinner table after he was gone.
And, of course, the night I lost control of my Magic.
It had taken only a second, one stupid moment where I couldn’t keep it all in anymore.
Whenever I closed my eyes, I was drenched in the acrid, horrible scent of the car on fire.
The panicked look in the girl’s eyes when she realized she was trapped inside.
And how they all looked at me afterward, like I was some kind of animal.
Shadows flitted under Max’s hat in the midday heat, darkening a tiny divot above his eyebrow. “You’ve got to forgive yourself. No one’s mad anymore. No one even brought it up.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself.
It didn’t matter what Max said; I knew the facts. There were still people on this campus who thought I was dangerous. There were more than a few people—including some who had been sitting in that council room today—who’d called for my expulsion back then. I knew they hadn’t forgotten.
Max reached a tendril of his Magic out to calm me. My mind filled with his Magic: the sound of warm rain, the rough feel of a saddle. Coarse horsehair brushed against my cheek, but it was too close. Too intimate. I shoved the Magic away.
“Look, you can stop pretending, okay? Stop pretending you want me here for any other reason than getting your Magic back. We won’t last for two seconds in the cottage with that girl if we’re not honest with each other. She’ll eat us alive.”
He took a step back, wounded. “If you’d consider it for a second, Cel, I think you’d see I’m not the only one who misses their Magic. Have you even seen your folks yet? There’s a reason you came back here.”
“That’s not—”
We were interrupted by a voice behind me. “Cella! It’s good to see you again.”
“Dr. Simmons, hi,” I said, turning around and pushing aside my bangs.
He belonged to the Experimental, Esoteric, and Molecular Medicine (EEMM) Department.
Even for a school of Magic, he was a little on the eccentric side.
I wondered how he knew where I would be.
I didn’t remember seeing him in the room with us.
Max swallowed, the pained look on his face carefully painted over with his usual, relaxed charm. “I’m going to see if I can get someone to open the girl’s old room.” He hesitated. “See you in a bit?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Dr. Simmons happily took the vacant position at my side. “I wonder if I might chat with you a little about your abilities, if you ever find yourself with a free moment. A dimidium on campus, the full pair! What a rare treat for those of us in the arcane studies.”
“Oh, uh, I don’t know if we’ll have time for that. We’ll only be here for a few days, helping with the investigation and all …” I fiddled with the bumblebee stud in my ear, rotating it back and forth.
“I wonder, when he feels pain, do you as well?”
I kept walking toward the campus dormitories, sidling away as the professor took a step closer. “It’s a little more complicated than that. When we’re close, our Magic is magnified, and so is our sensory input.”
“You feel what the other feels.”
“More or less.”
Which was why it was hard to keep secrets from each other. Which was why I had moved to Portland, nearly fifteen hundred miles away. Which was why a whole lot of things, none of which I particularly wanted to explain to Dr. Simmons.
“And your objects are the same, of course, so that you may combine your Magic together.”
“Sort of,” I gritted out. Max’s objects were the leather bit from the rein of his favorite horse, the first drops of a summer rain, and a porcelain dog figurine his dad had given him as a child.
The same base materials as mine (leather, water, porcelain), but unique to him.
Everyone did Magic differently, even us dimidiums. Max’s Magic, for example, was sunny and a little rough like saddle leather; it felt warm like summer rain on the back of your neck.
Whereas whenever I did Magic, I always ended up sopping wet and in the dark.
“Extraordinary,” he said. “Much like the law of gravitational force. The closer you are in each other’s orbit, the stronger your pull to each other.
I often wonder how much progress I would make on my work if I had a powerful partner to help.
You must be quite relieved when he’s around! ” He chuckled.
“Yeah. Well, if you’ll excuse me …”
By now, I was used to the uncomfortable questions.
As dimidiums, Max and I were two halves of one Magical soul.
Dimidiums were a relatively recent concept in the Magic world, discovered only in the last century.
There wasn’t a whole lot of concrete information on them.
There was, however, an abundance of speculation and misinformation.
It didn’t surprise me that Dr. Simmons implied that I needed Max more than he needed me.
Funny how whenever anyone talked to me about our abilities, they always found a reason to bring up Max.
You two were in a relationship, weren’t you?
Your emotional ties are quite strong; I wonder about the impact on you.
But whenever questions were posed to Max, they always centered around his strength, his accomplishments, our publications. I barely entered the conversation.
Max walked outside when we reached the front of House Torlaine, to investigate the prickly sensation I was feeling himself, and Dr. Simmons slunk back into the shadow.
Simmons nodded in the direction of Maritza’s cottage. “Well, I’ll leave you to it then. I’d loan you some holy water and crosses, but I’m afraid I don’t have any to spare.” He chuckled half-heartedly and nodded his goodbyes.
“What’d he want?” Max asked after he walked away.
“Just the usual dimidium questions. Can I experiment on you, et cetera.” I shook my arms out, trying to shake loose the lingering ickiness.
Max grimaced.
I’d come here based on a desperate need for cash, and because Dr. Robetresse had asked for my help.
It didn’t change how I felt about Max, but if I stayed …
we could use Object Theory to actually help people.
It was what we’d dreamed of when we’d first started our research on objects.
And if we could actually save someone like Dani?
It would make all of this worth it. It would certainly silence Object Theory’s critics, who’d been growing in recent years. My own, too.*
We walked into House Torlaine’s cool, air-conditioned hallway, shutting out the bright sun outside. Now, inside with Max, everything felt too quiet, too close. I thought we could probably both hear my heart hammering away.
“Look,” I said, unable to meet his gaze, “if we’re going to be working together here …”
“So you’re staying?” he asked. I didn’t have to look up to hear the excitement in his voice.
“For now. But if we’re going to be working together here, I think we should set some ground rules.”
His posture relaxed, and he leaned back against the rust-colored wall, smiling good-naturedly. “Oh, this should be good.”
“As you know, I’ve given up my Magic. I understand that while we’re here, we may be required to … access said Magic. But I don’t want you doing big spells and using up all my energy and leaving me drained. Granted, with an approved request, we may—”
He arched an eyebrow. “With your approval, I can access my Magic that you withheld for five years when you left without a word?”
I ignored him. “With a request that we both agree on, we may access each other’s Magic, as needed.
I won’t be here long, so you might as well use the Magic you need.
I think in this way we may be able to work together.
” I finished somewhat anticlimactically, blundering ahead despite the increasingly incredulous expressions he was making.
Despite his attempts to hide it, he was definitely still a little pissed at me. Well, I guess that made two of us.
“What? No list of demands?”
“That’s it.” I cleared my throat, wondering if I should have added more, then shook my head. “Do you accept?”
He smiled, a spark of mischief in his eyes that I knew well enough to nearly make me regret the whole thing.
“Ah, Cella,” he breathed, his voice dropping to a growl.
He took a step closer, pressing me to the wall and making my heart do an Olympic sprint.
His hands splayed out above me, and he leaned in close to say into my ear, “You know that, for you, I’d do anything. ”
I fought to get my breathing under control, and that lopsided grin of his tumbled out. “Nice to see I can still get your blood pumping.”
“You caught me off guard. Anyone would—” Damn our connection. Damn it to hell.
He walked away, still grinning. “Uh-huh.”