His gregarious reputation clearly had not suffered from his association with me, and I could not decide whether I was relieved by that or vexed by it.
“I was, yes. But you were not the topic on people’s tongues there, like you are here.”
“So thereisgossip.”
“Not really,” he insisted. “What they’re saying is surprisingly accurate, so I’d have to classify it more as conversation. Pryce told everyone about your memory. And about the window. Though he does not seem to have disclosed his own part in what happened to it.”
“Of course he didn’t.”
“To be fair, he’s hardly had the chance, considering that he has himself, just this very afternoon, become an irresistible topic of conversation.”
“Has he?”
“If you’ll glance subtly to your left—subtly”—Wilder elbowed me when my head swiveled too sharply as I resettled the tall stack of notes tucked beneath my arm—“you might notice that young Pryce Wishart is wearing a hat today. And if you were to squint across the quadrangle, and perhaps shield your face from the setting sun, you would further notice that the hair peeking beneath the brim of that hat is a robust shade of cobalt.”
“What?” Ididsquint, and indeed, I found Pryce standing in the shade of the Seminary’s front facade, all alone. Quite apart, in fact, from several of our classmates. As I watched, he tugged at the brim of a hat, and as he pulled it lower on his forehead, it rose on the back of his scalp. Where his hair was, in fact, a bright and vibrant shade of blue.
“In addition…” Wilder continued as we paused in our journey across the quadrangle, “if you were to move close enough to see his face and hands, you might notice that they, too, are now a particular shade of blue. As are his eyebrows. And his eyelashes. And his nasal hair. If you were to come up with a reason for him to remove his clothes—though I do not recommend such an adventure—you would further notice that there is not currently, nor will there be for the foreseeable future, a single hair or inch of flesh on that boy’s body that is not some variation of the color blue.”
I blinked at Pryce, then glanced away when he caught me looking, but not before I noticed two young women giggling from a few feet away while they stared at him.
“Ohmy.” I grabbed Wilder’s arm with my free hand and tugged him toward the Conservatory, and I only let go when I noticed him struggling with the box he held. “Has he caught some contagion? My father said there’s an illness that casts the flesh a strange shade of—”
Wilder’s laughter caught me entirely off guard, but it took me only a second to understand.
“You…?” I couldn’t resist a glance back at Pryce. “Youdyedhim?”
“I know. It’s petty and amateur. But it was also disappointingly easy, and I assure you, it’s only thevisibleportion of his requital.”
I stopped cold in the grass, a sick feeling churning in my stomach. “What else did you do?” I hissed.
He nudged me forward with his elbow. “I simply let the punishment fit the original offense.”
“Meaningwhat, Wilder?” I demanded as we slowly navigated the stone pathway.
“I made sure he will not be able to demand the ‘favor’ he tried to extort from you from anyone else. For the foreseeable future.”
A dark sort of satisfaction crept up from the pit of my stomach. “Pryce is…?”
“Not feeling particularly virile,” Wilder confirmed as we approached the Conservatory.
“He cannot…perform?” I whispered, eyes wide.
“Or assault. Though he may not have perceived that bit yet.Oh, to be a fly on the wall of Pryce Wishart’s bedchamber…” He frowned, looking suddenly ill. “That is not a sentence I ever thought to utter.”
“You rendered himimpotent, for what he did to me?”
Wilder shrugged, the box bobbing in his grip. “I am simply using alchemy to slow the forces of chaos and make the world a better place, one violent clod at a time. Though, to be clear, I dyed him blue in revenge for having smashed my vials. And for generally being a squandering of organic material. Human detritus.” Another shrug. “And because I had a new elixir in need of a test subject.”
“Why would you have an elixir that tints the human form? Or that renders impotence?”
Wilder winked at me. “Because I don’t always get it right on the first attempt. Trial and error is an inefficient yet vastly entertaining process, and sometimes the mistakes prove more profitable than what I intended to invent.”
“Wilder Gregory.” I turned on the second step toward the Conservatory’s front portico so I could look at him at eye level. “Has anyone ever told you that you arequitethe charming calamity?”
“You said something very similar to me once.” He gave me a cheeky wink. “Only the word you used was ‘disaster.’ And you were not smiling when you said it.”
“Well, I am smiling now.”
