“Right, right.”
Magic, he’d said—but shedim magic, not letterform. “Why’s it look like that?”
He paused in his motions and appeared intrigued. “How’s it look?”
I watched the threads expand and contract. “Like you’re pulling at a ball of shimmering light. Does it look different to you?”
“Shedim retinas are different than humans’, so yes. We can see a different range of particles than you can. And we have what you might call thaumaturgical sensing.”
“You can sense magic.”
“Essentially.”
“So, what do you see?”
He looked at the light. “Mess. You know how wool is combed before being spun? I’m essentially combing my magic. Neatening it up, keeping it aligned and tidy.”
“That’syourmagic?”
He nodded, looking amused. “Some of it. Interesting you can see it. Humans usually can’t.” He turned to the closest student, a boy at the table behind us wearing a red Engineering blazer. “Can you see anything between my hands?”
The boy flinched, stared at Daziel, looked at me, then shook his head very quickly.
Daziel nodded, satisfied. “See?”
I swallowed, fixing on the very distinct golden glow. I wasn’t a huge fan of being able to see things other humans couldn’t. “An effect of the betrothal?”
“Probably.”
Great. “You don’t have, say, alistof all the things that might happen to me because of the betrothal?”
“Nope,” Daziel said cheerfully. “Since you’re a human, I have no idea.”
Cool.
~~~
I spent the restof the week improving the spell. Daziel was unexpectedly easygoing about my lack of attention, perhaps due to knockball season ramping up; he attended his biweekly practices with great fervor and often went out with Ezra and other teammates afterward to discuss strategy.
One afternoon, when he was at practice and I was trying to figure out how to trim the beginning of the spell without losing any pertinent information, a bell in my rooms chimed.
The bell connected to a panel in the lobby of Testylier House. When a visitor wrote their name in the clay tab downstairs, then pressed a resident’s name, the writing appeared in the resident’s matching tab upstairs. Such spells couldn’t work over great distances without shocking amounts of neshem, but they were useful within the same building.Tirtzah bat Tovah, my tab read.
I slid my feet into my dorm slippers and spared a glance for my hair before darting out the door. This was it, then. She’d decided whether to tell my parents about Daziel.
Downstairs, I found Aunt Tirtzah in the receiving parlor, reading a briefing. I tried to take in the room from her perspective. Itwas very much a student parlor, worn furniture, faded wallpaper, glow globes thirty years out of style. Two windows looked out at the street, where students hurried by. “Hi, Aunt Tirtzah.”
She put away her papers. “Naomi. Hello.”
“Can I get you something to drink? Tea, coffee, water?”
“Tea would be lovely.”
I set the water to boil and offered her the parlor’s eclectic mix of teas to choose from. She selected chamomile, and I followed her lead. I could use some soothing.
“I’m sorry to impinge upon you.” She regarded the basic furnishings in a way that made me suspect she was sorry to subject herself to student housing. “I’m here to talk about Daziel.”
“I figured.”
