When we finished preparing for the spell, Professor Altschulerreturned with a colleague and three of his staff. All nine of us read the spell together.
It didn’t work.
“Failures can be as useful as successes,” Professor bat Rachel said, aiming for a positive spin. But we’d had enough failures here.
Dismissed, I headed out, my stomach twisted. The spell hadn’t worked, I didn’t know if I’d have a scholarship next year, and on top of everything, I’d hurt Daziel’s feelings.
An unsettling, lukewarm rain started to fall. The rainy season wasn’t due for another few weeks, but thick, plump droplets burst on my shoulders and the pavement like slow tears. At least it wasn’t too cold, though the rain increased from a slow patter to a fast and soaking downfall. I ducked under a shop’s awning to wait it out. Everything looked dark and shiny, the world washed clean and smelling of petrichor.
“Fine,” Daziel said. I jumped, looking wildly around before locating the demon seated on the top of a wrought iron lamp. His face was shadowed, but a familiar loftiness shaded his voice. “I accept your apology.”
Relief washed through me, tinged by pique that he’d reappeared in the haughtiest possible manner. I shot him an arch look, relieved to be back to trading quips. “Did I apologize?”
He jumped down, landing lightly on his feet. “Earlier.”
So he had been listening, and it had mattered to him. I studied him, this strange, wild boy. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell Professor Altschuler not to be a jerk.”
He shrugged. He wore a scarf thrown haphazardly over his shoulders, new shoes in a buttery dark leather, and silver cuffs around his wrists.
“Did you go shopping?”
“I asked a gentleman who shared my box at the opera where he had acquired his coat, and he recommended an establishment.”
I blinked several times, not sure which part of this to respond to first. “You went to theopera?”
“At first I went in because everyone was well dressed and the building so pretty, but then I stayed because I was amazed.” He still looked amazed. “The drama! The vocal acrobatics! The costumes! Afterward, I wanted to look as sharp as everyone else.”
My lips quirked up. Of course he had.
He lifted an umbrella I hadn’t noticed and stepped out into the downpour. Impossibly, when rain hit the umbrella, it slid off in a long arc, creating a dry dome at least six feet in diameter.
I stepped under the dome, which moved with us as we walked. I craned my neck to take it in, trying not to gape. “How are you stopping the rain?”
“Magic. Shall we head home?”
Human magic couldn’t do anything like this. “We’re not headed home.” I grinned, not without trepidation. “It’s Friday. We’re going to the pub.”
Wonderment slid over Daziel’s face, as though I’d announced I was taking him to a ball on Society Hill. “I have never been to a pub before!”
I snorted and led him through the winding streets of the Scholars’ Quarter, stopping at a wooden door, which couldn’t muffle the storm of noise behind it. “Get ready, then. And stay close.”
I pushed the door open into the packed pub. With beer both cheap and good, people always crowded in here, and it’d become my friends’ de facto meeting place. Rain dripped off the people closest to the door, while musicians strummed their guitars and heckledtheir listeners into tossing coins. I elbowed my way past students with sloshing pints, the floor already sticky beneath my feet.
My friends squeezed around a table in the back—my floormates, along with Ezra and Hiram. We’d met the boys during orientation, and we’d all bonded over being scholarship students. Ezra was loud and boisterous, with an opinion on everything. He had uncontrollable black hair, large ears, and he asked a hundred questions a minute. He was in the School of Humanities, like me and Leah, though he complained about the government so much I wondered why he wasn’t in school to change it. Hiram was quieter, shorter, and very handsome, with a tendency toward dour pronouncements. He came from the Taro Islands, like so many sailors did in Port Naborre, and spoke with a soft, lyrical accent. Like Gilli, he’d enrolled in the School of Science.
Nerves tightened my chest as we approached. I hadn’t known the boys long enough to know how they’d react to Daziel, and I didn’t want to mess up this new friendship group. Back home, I hadn’t had a group like this. I had my sisters, and I was friendly with my age group in the village—Abel and Hila and Keren and Mendel—but I’d always felt too intense around them, like I cared too much. This group fit me, and I didn’t want to mess it up.
“Hi, guys.” I slid onto the edge of the bench, bumping Leah’s hips with mine to encourage her to squeeze down. Daziel perched next to me. I gave a floppy wave, trying to swallow my nerves. “This is Daziel.”
They’d heard of him already, of course, but Hiram and I shared no classes, and Ezra and I only had class on Mondays. “I thought you were joking,” Ezra said, astonishment clear. “You’re actually betrothed to a demon?”
Daziel leaned forward, beaming—happy, I suspected, to tease some gullible humans. “We are.”
The boys drew back.
I accepted the glasses of cheap ale Leah pushed over, passing one to Daziel. I needed to set the situation straight. “We’re not really betrothed. He’s just hanging around a bit.”
“Technically, we’rereallybetrothed,” Daziel said. I was so used to him sounding chipper that I could identify an undercurrent of irritation. He didn’t like me refuting the betrothal, then.
