"The Grimoire Girls," she reads. "All four disciplines. Simultaneously." She looks up at me. "This is what you are?"
"I think so." My voice is wrecked. "The sphere that cracked in Warrick's class—it cycled through all four. The shadow spell in the Mors demonstration wentintome, Brittany. Callum's shadows. Atlas's lightning. I absorbed them. Like I was—like they weremine."
She's quiet for a long time, reading through the rest of my notes. Herbert settles more firmly onto my knee, his tiny legs tucked underneath him.
"So you're basically a nuclear warhead in a sundress."
A laugh escapes me. Ugly and wet and a little hysterical. "That's one way to put it."
"I'm serious. If you can drain magic from all four disciplines—" She taps one of the pages. "That's why they're scared. That's why Callum's been reporting to mommy dearest after every single incident, that's why Atlas looks at you like you're going to detonate. You're not just a mage who doesn't fit the system. You're someone who couldbreakit."
"They destroyed the sorority, Brittany. They condemned the building. Every grimoire after 1926 just—" I swallow hard. "Gone. The records say 'dispersed' or 'handled' and then nothing. No transfers. No deaths on file. Just—nothing."
"Well, that's not ominous at all."
"Are you going to take this seriously?"
"I am taking it seriously. I'm taking it so seriously that my first question is: are you going to explode?"
I blink. "What?"
"Explode. Detonate. Go nuclear. Because if you're sitting here telling me you're some kind of magical sponge who absorbs everyone's power, I need to know if there's a limit. And I need to know what happens when you hit it."
"I don't know."
"Great." She crosses her arms. "If you're going to detonate, at least give me a heads up so I can evacuate first. I have a very nice record collection that I'd prefer not to lose to a magical explosion."
I stare at her. She stares back. Herbert stares at both of us.
The laugh that comes out of me this time is still broken, but it's real. Brittany's mouth twitches.
"So." She holds up the notes. "Two absorptions confirmed. Shadow and storm. You pulled death magic out of a spiralingspell in Ossium Hall and lightning out of the actual sky. Both times it went into you and didn't come back out."
"Yes."
"And both times, the guys responsible looked like they were going to shit themselves."
"Pretty much."
"But you haven't tested blood magic."
Something cold slides through my stomach. "No."
"And you haven't tested chaos magic."
"No."
Brittany looks at me with an expression I can't read. Then she looks at Herbert on my knee. Then she looks under her bed, at the darkness where Herbert lives, where her blood-magic familiar goes when he's not perched on me like a concerned therapist.
"Do you want to?"
My pulse kicks. "Brittany—"
"I'm a failing Sanguis student with a spider familiar and academic probation. I'm not exactly working with top-tier magic here." She holds out her hand, and Herbert crawls off my knee and across the floor toward her. "If you really are a grimoire, blood magic should react to you the same way shadow and storm did. And if it doesn't—"
"Then I'm not a grimoire and this is all a terrible mistake."
"Either way, at least we'd know."
