“I will ask them to assess your health,” she said. “Then I will injure you.”
Axell nodded. “You will? Not…” His gaze drifted toward Ellie Brandeau. “Anyone else?”
Dr. Jemison said something too low to hear, and Axell nodded once. Then he took off his jacket, revealing a sleeveless shirt. Then he peeled off his shirt, too.
“When your patient is on your table…” The doctor paused as a table appeared.
Axell dutifully sat on it. He gathered his robe into a bunched-up thing and held it in his lap. As he did, he stared straight forward, not making eye contact with anyone in the room.
Dr. Jemison continued. “You need to be aware that a pleasant exterior—which most witches develop—is not proof that there is no injury.” She held up a hand, and they all watched as she lifted her palm, which visibly darkened. “What we do when we assess an injury is to first project our magic gently into their skin. Think of it as throwing a ball that you know will return to you.”
“Like a boomerang,” Daniel, an increasingly vocal student, said. “Or something you drop on a trampoline!”
The doctor nodded. Her hand brightened like it was a hot coal, and then the light she’d generated pulsed out like a strobe and sank into Axell’s skin.
“My patient flinched because I have warmed my magic so you can watch it.” The doctor directed the energy over the student’s chest, but she stopped at his belly button. “For your exercise, you will stop here, no lower,oryou may start at the ankle and work only to the area above the knee.”
She looked at Axell, who grimaced and gave a single nod.
“Does it hurt?” a student asked.
“The opposite,” Axell answered tersely.
“I do not typically select a male volunteer for this, as it is apparent when they react to this spell.” The doctor’s expression was bland, but as her meaning became clear, more than a few people’s gazes went to Axell’s bunched-up robe.
Axell, for his part, simply looked at the room’s ceiling. He didn’t appear embarrassed—or arrogant, for that matter. There was no smirk, but now that she understood what was happening, Maggie could see the tension in him.
“Why does it feel that way?” she asked. “I was healed—a lot of us were—but it didn’t feelgood.”
The doctor smiled like Maggie had answered a question correctly. “Because you were in so much pain that the pleasure was not obvious. The pleasure counters a measure of the agony if you’re legitimately injured, so it offsets the limits of pain relief options in Crenshaw.”
It was a clever system, and Maggie could give credit where credit was due. It didn’t change her opinions. She still wanted to go home,neededto go home, but she was vaguely disappointed that once she did, she wouldn’t remember all of the adaptations magic allowed.
“Right. You see the basics, and so each of you will try your hand. I’ll help you with the words you need to utter while you direct the magic into the volunteer’s body.” The doctor motioned them forward, and Maggie joined the group.
She cast a surreptitious glance at Dan. He was too close for comfort, but he seemed vaguely anxious.Maybe because Axell was the one at the front of the class.
They waited their turn, and Maggie was unpleasantly surprised to see two of her classmates intentionally push the boundary.
Maggie started to notice that they were being called on in a not entirely random order. If there was a strong magic—and there were two—the next couple were weaker. It was as if Dr. Jemison could already tell who was and was not adept.
When it was Daniel’s turn, he had a tiny spark like a few specks of glitter in hand, and for the first time, Axell looked disappointed.
“He really likes you,” she whispered to Daniel when he came back to stand at her side.
Dan looked back at Axell and smiled. “That’s what he tells me.”
Two more students went, both lower level, and then it was Maggie’s turn. She stayed as far back as she could, not loving the idea of being the center of this sort of attention. Arguing in court was one thing, but this felt uncomfortably personal.
Maggie felt a low hum, like a tiny vibration in her skin, as she said the necessary words.
Carefully, she directed that glow into Axell’s foot. She could feel the callus on his second toe that another student mentioned.
Then she glanced over her shoulder at Dan, who had stepped too close and stumbled into her.
She felt her magic surge as his hand touched her spine to steady himself. She was glad not to fall, but the pulsation she felt surged like switching a vibrator from low buzz to atomic level.
Maggie tried to step forward, away from Dan’s touch, but he followed—and the magic just kept building.
