He sighed. “Well what?”
“It was incredible, but I can’t be going around doing magic by accident, don’t you see? I need your help or I’ll be a hazard—I mayalreadybe a hazard—and I have a class at noon, and all these students—oh God, if I hurt a student—”
He held up a hand and shook his head. “There’s no danger of that.”
“Oh? What about this?” She thrust the cup remnant in his direction. “I’m involuntarily doing magic, and you’re standing there making assumptions.”
“You didn’t do magic.”
“Anotherassumption.”
“No, Daggett.” He pushed away from the door. “I know you didn’t.”
Now he was simply being unreasonable. She suppressed the urge to stamp her foot like a child. “You can’t say that! You weren’t even there.”
“Who knows more about magic, you or me?”
“You, but—”
“Trust me,” he said, looking at her with such intensity that she wondered whether he was trying to mesmerize her.
Well, it wasn’t working. She glared at him. “I can’t think of anyone I trust less.”
His lips thinned, but his answer was smooth as silk: “And yet you sleep in the Inferno with me.”
“Notwithyou,” she muttered, annoyed at the little swoop down her spine his words had triggered. Irritating man with his irritatingly striking voice.
“And willingly go placeswithme where no one would ever find you,” he said, gesturing around the room.
This potentially threatening statement did not deter her. If worst came to worst, she had a jagged porcelain shiv at hand.
“You have to help me if you don’t want to risk random explosions on campus,” she insisted.
He screwed up his face, pinched the bridge of his nose and let go of a breath in a whooshing exhale. “Listen: You’re not doing magic. You’ll never do magic. You are utterly, completely, genetically unable to perform the smallest bit of it.”
This time she did stamp her foot. “Come on! You can’t expect me to buy that. You said everyone’s capable.”
“No. I said virtually everyone is capable.” He paused to let that sink in. “You are not.”
Emily had always thought the idea of hearts skipping beats at times of great emotion was romantic nonsense, but hers genuinely halted for an instant before accelerating at an alarming pace.
It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. He had to be lying.
His face gave nothing away.
“So everyone but me can do magic—that’s what you want me to believe?” Her words wavered. Her whole body was once again shaking, but for an entirely different reason than when the cup cracked. “You just don’t want to train me, or”—an idea struck full-force—“or you’re afraid I’ll be more powerful than you. I reallydidget through your pretend wall, didn’t I—”
“I’m sorry to disillusion you,” Hartgrave said, his voice now a weapon as sharp as her piece of cup, “but you have not been doing magic. You have been undoing it, to my great frustration.”
She threw up her hands. “That’s the same thing!”
“No.” The louder she got, the quieter he went. “It’s the opposite thing. You’re a hurricane cutting a swathof destruction wherever you go—you, Daggett, are anti-magic.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. “What?”
“You disrupted my repairs to the cup. You demolished the spells hiding this room—yes, therearespells hiding this room,” he added as her breath hitched in shock. “And you’ve damaged your computer so many times I’ve lost count.”
Perhaps he saw in her expression that she was mentally explaining all his examples away, gathering the shreds of hope around her. (Spells! She’d been doing wild, unhelpful spells!) He leapt forward, catching her wrists with his bare hands.
