Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
The Teacher
The Physics, Astronomy, and Astrological Divination Department was a two-room block at the back of Ridley Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus.
A small building, it was composed of fat russet bricks, arched windows, and a white domed observatory at the roof.
Inside, the walls were covered with star charts, old maps, and prints of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton.
I filled my Christmas mug with stale coffee from the break room and wrapped my fingers around it.
The AC from the rest of the building shunted all the cold air down this wing—another sign of a Magic building that needed an architect.
But I couldn’t tell if it was the chill or anxiety that was responsible for the twisting of my stomach.
The hallway was completely empty. As our footsteps echoed down it, I had the feeling of walking into a crypt.
When we reached the classroom, Dr. Antony Strauss was hunched over a lab table, back to us. Max knocked lightly on the wall.
“No office hours today,” Strauss said without turning around. “Funny how the sign on the door supplies information. All you have to do is read it.”
“Afraid we’re not here for help with our physics homework,” Max drawled.
Dr. Strauss’s head flicked up, a lock of pale hair falling over one glassy, chilly eye.
He slid in front of what he’d been working on.
But not before I caught sight of it—a badly damaged miniature recreation of the Sir Isaac Newton statue at Cambridge, dressed in draping fabrics and holding a prism.
The thing’s head and legs had been lopped off.
His mouth folded into a smirk, as if more bemused than annoyed by the interruption. “And how can I help you?”
Dr. Strauss was as handsome as I remembered, tall and fit with short blond hair and a clean-shaven face.
When he looked at me, I got the same giddy feeling from when I took his class years ago.
Though he wasn’t all the same. There was an unsettling intensity to his eyes that wasn’t there before.
And beneath the rolled sleeves of his button-up, his skin had an ill, feverish look to it.
He yanked his sleeves down when he saw me looking.
Max stepped closer to me.
“We were hoping you could tell us about Dani,” I said.
“Certainly,” he said, not dropping his wolfish smile. “Anything I can do to help.”
“Six of her eight classes were in here?”
I let my hair fall around me like a curtain, blocking out the feel of Strauss’s eyes on me. Something about his glacier-blue eyes reminded me of a predator watching as I stumbled blindly through the woods. My fingers wrapped around my Christmas mug, drawing what comfort I could from it, from Aaron.
“Not in here. Up there,” he said, pointing to the floor above us. We followed him up the creaking stairs to the observatory.
The observatory opened as wide as a whale’s mouth. A twenty-foot white telescope stood in the center of the room, beneath a dome already partially open to the sky. Smaller telescopes were positioned around it and pointed skyward. Taped on the walls were sheets of paper filled with equations.
“You two must have been close, considering how much time you spent together,” Max said.
“I make myself available to all my students during office hours, but I wouldn’t say we were close, no.”
I frowned. When I was a student, Dr. Strauss also served as Dean of Student Affairs.
He was beloved by students and staff alike.
I wondered if Dr. Robetresse ever regretted the position she’d put him in, if he’d ever used that power and popularity to try to weasel his way into her job.
There was certainly the question of why he was no longer on the council.
“Did Dani ever do or mention anything that seemed odd to you? Any spells she asked for your help with?” Max asked, keeping his voice light, though I could tell from the tightness in his shoulders that he didn’t feel entirely comfortable with the man either.
Strauss arched an eyebrow. “It’s divine astrology; we don’t do spells. And here I thought you were supposed to be some kind of genius.” He didn’t drop his smile, though it lacked any warmth.
Max halted. If there was anything he hated, it was condescension. There were so many times over the years when I’d wondered if academia was really not the place for him, and why he did it at all. If it was just for me.
Still, Max kept his expression carefully neutral, carefully friendly. “Ah.”
“Though there was a time, shortly after Danica first entered my classes as a freshman, when she seemed … distracted. Obsessed with finding a book of some sort—one of Magic, I assumed—though it seemed, after a few conversations, she determined I didn’t have it.
I never heard any more of it, but several of her papers that first year had a fervent quality to them, some underlying obsession with arcana and the pursuit of knowledge.
I admit much of it didn’t make sense, and she had to rewrite them. ”
Nothing really out of the ordinary there; plenty of students came to this school looking for spellbooks.
And there were plenty of them to be found, but the majority were fake, filled with junk spells.
The real Magic texts, the old books that hadn’t all been destroyed in the Inquisition and book burnings, were few and far between.
Whenever any were found, they were kept in a locked room until they were approved for study. *
The wooden floor creaked as we walked. I tried to see it all from Dani’s perspective, to imagine what it must have been like working up here.
The observatory smelled like the dry, hazy air blowing across the mesas, tinged with smoke.
Incense, maybe? I imagined I could spend a lot of time up here myself.
I ran my hand along the length of a telescope. “You don’t do spellwork because you divine Magic streams from the paths of the stars, like in the old days of astronomy.”
“Very good, Cella,” Strauss said, his voice liquid and deep.
“Magic of the gods is what they called it. Though now, of course, we all know it’s not gods that are responsible for Magic.
It’s a force in its own right, like the wind or tides.
Many of my students’ objects lie outside of their reach.
So we study. We look for the paths of the stars coming down, the threads of scattered Magic to find the best way we may channel those objects. ”
That seemed to be the one constant of Magic—many hours of study.
Magic was complicated. There were few people who truly understood the intricacies of it, and fewer still Magic books had survived the ages to shed light on the subject.
It was a lifetime of study, thousands of hours of practice, of meditation, of finding the texts.
That was why many students here, despite being at a Magic university, didn’t attempt much other than trivial spells.
They weren’t willing to spend days sweating over a spell, practicing until their lips cracked and their voice went hoarse.
Until their fingers bled from clutching their objects and their minds felt like jelly from concentrating for so long.
They took their discipline: mathematics, physics, language, biology, and hoped that they’d pick up a few things in Magic, too, to help them along.
Spells to keep their coffee warm, or to find lost car keys, or to jot down notes in class.
They kept their objects near, but the more difficult spells, the complexities where Magic really shone, they mostly gave up on.
The only thing the students really needed to understand about Magic was that it was always there, hovering beneath the surface. Just like the ocean: you enter at your own peril, because it wouldn’t care one bit if you drowned in the process.
Strauss stepped toward me. “I had you in one of my classes, didn’t I? Phys 303.”
“Yes,” I said, blushing. I was surprised he remembered.
He tapped his temple. “Never forget a face. Especially yours. One would be remiss to forget the dimidium pair who took the world by storm.”
“For a time, at least.”
He considered me thoughtfully. “Sometimes the brightest candles burn the quickest.”
To my embarrassment, I found myself grinning like an idiot. The man frightened me, but there was something exciting, too, about his attention. As if by gaining it, you became somehow more significant in the world. I shook my head. It was a silly thought.
Max scuffed his boot against the ground, the cord bulging in his neck the only indication of a hitch in his pleasant demeanor. “What about her classmates? Were there any students Dani disliked or fought with? Anyone who had reason to hurt her?”
“These kids are applying to some of the most prestigious graduate programs in the country. MIT and Stanford only take a handful of PhD candidates a year. Joselyn, one of our seniors, was crushed after just narrowly missing a position at MIT. My students don’t have time to waste on grudges.”
“Uh huh. And these are spots they’re competing for?”
“They’re better suited to focus on their own applications.”
They both smiled with their teeth at each other, Strauss with his icy Scandinavian looks, Max with his golden tan and dimples. The two fought to keep up the friendly facade.
“Ah, come on. They’ve got to be competing.” Max shrugged innocently. “Only got so many spots, right?”
“In the strictest sense of the word, I suppose you could call it that,” Dr. Strauss admitted.
“But I would never let anyone harass any of my students. At any rate, Dani kept to herself. She was kind, and well on her way to becoming a brilliant physicist, but reclusive. She was most at ease up here, working.”
“And what about you? You hold any grudges against her?” asked Max.