She’d thought at the time that he was reacting to the pile of books she was shelving, books likeA Compleat System of MagickandMalleus Maleficarum. But no—he’d been reacting toher.
“You knew immediately, didn’t you,” she said. “As soon as you met me.”
He shrugged. “Suspected.”
“What do I look like to you?”
A smile ghosted across his face. “A sepia-tone photograph. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown sweater, brown pants ...”
He paused, as if waiting for a snappy comeback. Perhaps something about the pot calling the kettle monochromatic. But she didn’t have it in her, and he shifted, smile gone.
“Every person has an aura,” he said. “Someone with ability and training can see it. Nearly everyone creates small amounts of magic continuously—think carbon dioxide—and a minuscule amount hangs about them like a faint white corona. Unless they start convincing, that is. Then it’s quite bright. I assume it’s the aftereffects of drawing magic from the atmosphere.”
He paused. “You are also surrounded by a nimbus. But it’s pitch black.”
She stared at him in speechless horror.
“Which makes sense,” he added, “as any magic that comes into contact with you is fried to a crisp.”
He said this so conversationally—as if it didn’t matter—that the urge to tell him off rose up from the acid in her stomach.You’ve got the interpersonal skills of a caged bull, you’re compulsively secretive and I hate you.
Actually, what she felt about him was far too complicated to boil down to a single emotion. But the fact remained that he could do magic—Hartgrave, who didn’t seem to care about it at all—and she couldn’t. Where was the justice in that?
“No need to come by at seven anymore,” she said, scrambling to her feet.
He looked befuddled. “What?”
“You never wanted to talk to me anyway, and now the feeling is mutual.”
She opened the door and slammed it shut behind her, thethunksounding like the severing of an almost-friendship. It was then that she remembered her noon class. Oh no, what time was it?
Seven thirty-five, according to her watch. The watch that had stopped working just like every other watch she’d ever owned.
Because of her. She was the problem.
She barreled along the corridors like the destructive hurricane she was, shot past Bernie without answering his “where’s the fire” and took the stairs two at a time. When she burst into the classroom, she discovered she wasn’t late after all. She lectured with furious zeal about the Great Depression and returned to her office to grade papers, to the possible detriment of the authors.
Upsetting enough that she would never cast a spell. Worse still that her body stood in opposition to all the everyday things making the world tick. But most terrible of all, somehow, was the knowledge that she obliterated magic just by existing.
“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” she whispered, laying her head on the essay-covered table.
She ached to call her father and tell him everything. Mom was the supplier of advice, which she could also use, but at the moment she most needed consolation—Dad’s specialty. He cheered her up after disappointments and (if she was really, really disappointed) plied her with cookies. The day she’d realized she had to take the Ashburn offer, the one she’d tossed in a drawer because surely something better would come along, he’d driven the two hours to Iowa City with homemade ginger snaps.
But she couldn’t talk to him aboutthis. He would think she was losing it and be uneasy about her mental health for the rest of his life. The simple fact that she couldn’t tell her parents she was anti-magic made the pain of being so all the more keen.
She went to her bookcase, the one packed full of her childhood, and pulled out a paperback with a taped-up cover and contents she could practically recite from memory. She read about the orphaned hero leaving his gray, mundane world for the riotous color and adventure of the magical one, and she felt simultaneously better and worse.
Two tears fell on a page. She blotted the wet spot with her sleeve and closed the book. Hard to use fantasy for comfort now. Back to grading.
Just then, the Inferno door creaked open and clicked shut, followed by the echoing sound of a man wearing boots. The only man who appeared at seven every night.
The clock on her desk showed it was in fact the appointed time. He showed up—he showed up as if nothing had happened. She turned and found him standing in her archway, face an unreadable blank.
“Go away,” she said, the words quavering.
“I once told you that, if you recall.” He crossed over the threshold and straddled her computer chair. “Refresh my memory—did you leavemealone?”
“I know you want to enjoy my misery, but could you do it later?”
