The lab shows the Quad through huge windows. There are four workstations, as this is ordinarily a space for doctoral students, but two of them have been closed off. In the other two, I find everything Elethior and I might need: a desk, storage locker, electronic hookups, office supplies, and a rolling whiteboard each. A shared space at the back has a cabinet, fridge, and rows of shelves, all furnished with spell components, and a round dais made of smooth white marble in the middle of the room sits under a few protection glyphs embedded in the ceiling, perfect for testing out spell circles.
Elethior isn’t here yet, so I claim the best workstation, the one with the most light near the window. I unpack the stuff I brought, mostly binders of research and texts from the library, and once I flip on my laptop, I lean back in the desk chair and… wait.
I don’t know what Elethior’s schedule is. We probably were expected to coordinate, but I don’t have a way to contact him and didn’t care to ask for one, and neither did he.
I roll idly in my desk chair and check how long until I have to go to work—one of my scholarships is dependent on work study, and since I’m not a TA this semester, I took a job stocking books in the library. It’s sure to be mind-numbing, but I didn’t want anything too taxing to compete with this research project. I’ve got several hours until my first shift.
Another ten minutes pass, 9A.M.rolls around, and I think, why the hell am I waiting on Elethior? I’ve been wanting resources like these at my fingertips foryears.
First things first: I summon Nick. I don’t plan on doing any spell work, but I need someone to talk at, and he’s a good listener.
He comes, curling his invisible body around my shin with deep, crackly fox purrs.
“Hey, buddy.” I scratch what turns out to be his back, his spine arching under my fingertips. “Gotcha something over break.”
I dig into my component belt and pull out a jaunty fedora.
I secure it to his head with an elastic band.
“You’re dapper as hell, Nicholas,” I tell him, and he chirps in what I interpret as delighted approval. “Now.” I stand, clicking my tongue as I open one of my binders and flip through notes. “Ready to be the world’s best sounding board?”
The fedora leaps up and lands about a foot above my desk.
I poked at my project over break but purposefully kept distance from it so I could come back fresh. But something’s stalling out in my head.
My eyes flick to the lab’s door.
A beat, and the lock pad on the other side disengages.
Elethior saunters in, peeling off aviator sunglasses, backpack hanging on his shoulder, black leather jacket tight over an eggshell-blue shirt. His hair is pulled up at the back of his head, showing the buzzed side and his slightly pointed ears, and he’s in jeans with those dumbass motorcycle boots again. Black leather component harnesses squeeze each thigh.
He stops as the door closes behind him. He looks at the room from left to right with deliberate precision, surveying the workstations, the shelves, the marble dais, until he gets to me.
He sucks his teeth. “Sebastian.”
I point at the clock over the door to make a crack about how he wasted the morning, but I catch myself. I’m supposed to be cruising down the high road, wind in my hair, one of those kitschy driving scarves fluttering behind me. We’rekilling with kindnessnow.
Only my hand’s lifted.
I wave stupidly.
“Elethior,” I return.
His eyes narrow in suspicion. Which, earned.
He crosses to the other workstation, his back to me as he slides off his coat and pulls stuff out of his bag.
He’s got a few of the same textbooks I do.
I look at my books and frown.
Evocation and conjuration are nothing alike. Creation versus theft. So him having those books is an attempt at fucking with me, right?
My gaze lingers on my desk. Something’s missing.
No fedora.
Elethior lets out a shriek that’d have merollingif I wasn’t clinging to a one-sided olive branch by my fingertips. I lurch toward him as he whirls around, whipping out spell components and dropping his weight into an expert attack stance.
