“Are you in here?” she asks, tapping her fingers against her temple. “Don’t you know telepaths are banned from Sibylline? You didn’t, did you?” She laughs. “The school doesn’t let anyone like you in anymore.”
I grip the journal with all my strength, my fingers going numb.
“I guess there’s no use hiding it. You’ll just read my mind anyway,” Professor White says. “Yes, I orchestrated the fall of Arches to release the malum. I’d think you would understand. You are an architect. Like me, you are a builder and a dreamer. Don’t you want to do wonderful, impossible things? Don’t you want to explore the limits of magic? That’s what I’ve done. The malum is just the start of my grand design.”
It’s like I’m in Arches all over again. Everything has come crashing down around me.
No no no,this can’t be happening. Professor White has been nothing but kind, supportive! She’s done nothing but help.
Then it hits me like a brick in the gut. She’s been using me. I was an easy target. Desperate. I’ve been blinded by my own pathetic need to impress her. I didn’t think…
I squeeze my eyes shut, blinking back tears. “Why? What’s all of this for?”
“Want to know a secret?” Professor White asks playfully, like a schoolgirl. “When I was a student here, I barely passed my courses. I didn’t have a natural gift of my own, not like you and your friends. But with a malum, I can absorb magic. From chaos comes everything. I can bolster my own magic, channel from the malum into myself, take from those undeserving of it and put it to better use.” She steps toward me, her eyes alight with conviction. “I can make things, just like the great creators did. I can buildanything.”
“You can’t do this,” I say. “You have no idea what you’re tampering with.”
“Yes, Atticus,” she says. “I do.”
From behind her, a shadow moves.
Fear bolts me to the floor. I can’t move.
The malum emerges from her own shadow.
“I just need a little more magic,” she says. “Arches had to fall to set the malum free. But I have plenty of work left to do. Now…” White holds out her hand again. “Give me the journal, Atticus. And I can make this a little less painful for you.”
The malum hisses, and my blood runs cold.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
My magic allows me to enter the minds of other people. I do it with ease. I slip into their thoughts and listen. Now I attempt something I have never done.
I reach out.
33
Dorian
It was cold and barren—it was no longer the view that I remembered. The sunshine of her presence was far from me; the charm of her voice no longer murmured in my ear.
—Wilkie Collins,The Woman in White
Raven’s lips glideacross mine. Kissing her is so natural, so easy, we move in harmony. Her fingers run through my hair, her body close to mine. I narrow the gap between us, our limbs intertwined. It’s impossible to know where I end and she begins. We stumble—me forward, her backward—into the windowpane. Her back thumps against the glass.
“What about your boyfriend?” I whisper.
“What boy— Oh, you mean…”
“Snowmass.” I smirk.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she says. “Not anymore. We broke up.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. When I figured out what I wanted.”
Her warm fingers skitter across my skin, touching my neck, my jaw. She traces the curve of my ear with the tip of her finger, and I’m instantly hard. The lightest sensation sends everything in me on fire. I may as well be electric.
