Basically, I knew better than to expect a first attempt to work.
I still hoped. Who doesn’t want to be a prodigy, even if they’ve showed no prodigious talents before? This spell was so different from any we’d tried. Maybe itwouldwork.
“ ‘Remember when your skin was taut and pulled tight over your bones…’ ”
With this amount of neshem, you could feel it in the air when it activated against the charaktêres. Something shifted as we spoke, the magic waking up. It followed the words I read out loud, weaving through each charaktêre the neshem had seeped into. I exchanged wild, startled looks with Yael and Gidon and Stefan to see if they felt it too. They looked back with shock.
It was working.
“ ‘Come once more to that form, to your body as it was, with your skin supple and smooth…’ ”
The magic tangled. Disappointment jolted through me, followed by a stubborn refusal to admit defeat. I kept reading, trying to force the magic through. But the more I pushed, the more it knotted, refusing to flow. Desperate, I moved toward the neshem jar, thinking if I slathered more on the charaktêres it might addenough power to push through. Professor Altschuler caught my eye and shook his head.
The spell was broken.
Blinking back disappointment, I faded to a stop. No one looked at me. Professor Altschuler grunted low in his throat and swept out of the room.
“Sorry, everyone.” I stared at my feet. I’d failed. I’d been so conceitedly hopeful, but all I’d done was waste their time.
“What are you sorry for?” Yael said shortly. “I’ve been working on this for years, and this was more effective than anything I’ve done so far.”
I looked up, shocked she wasn’t mad. A bud of hope uncurled in my chest.
“It worked until here.” She pointed to the section where the magic had slowed to a murky trickle. “When you described it being parchment. It liked when you were describing being a calf—that was strong. The transition’s where it stuck.”
“Maybe you weren’t specific enough.” Stefan leaned beside Yael, shoulder to shoulder, his black hair striking against her blond, their blue School of Humanities blazers identical. It struck me how often they’d workshopped spells together—almost three years now. I was so used to thinking of Yael as serious and Stefan as off-the-cuff. I’d never considered how well they must know each other. “Maybe we need to describe the calf being killed, the hide tanned and turned to parchment. Bridge from calf to parchment scraps. We’re not trying to get a multidimensional sculpture of the calf, we still want it to be parchment.”
I nodded slowly. I’d been willing to give up too quickly because I was nervous and embarrassed, because Professor Altschuler hadwalked out on us—but I wasn’t a savant to land it on the first try. I was steady, determined, and driven, and I would keep trying, and maybe that was worth the same amount as being brilliant. “I’ll work on it.”
“We’ll all work on it,” Yael said. “Four minds are better than one.”
My eyes must have widened, because she lifted her brows challengingly. None of us had ever collaborated—we all wanted to stand out.
But…four mindswerebetter than one. We’d have better odds of success. Besides, they all knew the spell now. They’d have their own jumping-off points to try.
My thought startled me, how territorial it was. It made me realize maybeI’d been as standoffish as I’d imagined they were.
I didn’t want to be standoffish and competitive and isolated and alone. “Okay,” I said. “Together.”
~~~
Daziel spent over anhour getting ready for my aunt’s first luncheon.
“Isthiswhy you went to her party without me?” I teased. I’d been ready for thirty minutes, and he’d spent the same time coaxing his hair into perfect curls. I sat cross-legged on the couch, Paz asleep on my knee, and alternated between Old Cinnaian language exercises and watching Daziel. Rain fell outside, but it was cozy within; I had a blanket draped over my legs, and two candles burned in the exquisite pair of carved bronze lanterns Daziel had brought home.
“I’ve never been invited to a human luncheon before,” he said.“I want to look right. And no, of course not, I went without you because I wanted to shock you with my sudden appearance.”
“Glad we’ve got that cleared up,” I said dryly. “You look good. You don’t need to keep tinkering.”
“I don’t want to lookgood,” he sniffed. “I want to lookastounding.”
I smothered a smile. “You look astounding.”
I’d said the words automatically, but as I watched Daziel study himself in the mirror, I studied him too. His outfit was exquisite, a crisply ironed green jacket over trousers the silvery green of olive trees. But my eyes caught on his face, which had become so familiar to me I no longer found the solid black of his eyes jarring or the shimmer around his body disconcerting. Instead, I noticed how very beautiful he was.
I looked away, feeling overly warm. I’d known he was attractive from the start—his inhuman beauty had stood out—but it felt weirdly intimate to notice his looks now that I knew him so well. It felt less objective and more intimate, a flush of attraction heating my whole body. I stared downward, unusual shyness washing over me. It wouldn’t do me any good to find Daziel attractive. He was my roommate and my tutor, and that was it. As my aunt had said, the two of us had no future. And I had my spellwriting and grades to focus on.
Besides, he’d never acted interested, save calling me beautiful a couple of weeks ago—and even then he might have just been being polite. I wasn’t going to dash my heart on uncertain shores.
