“Prove it.”
Nearby, a lamp crackled.
“Please,” he added, fluttering his eyelashes. And while Amelia was trying to decide whether he’d darkened them with cosmetics, he reached out to grab the teaspoon again. She automatically slapped his hand away. He slapped hers back.
At which point, both remembered they were standing in full view of their peers, and proceeded to act accordingly.
In other words, a hand-slapping match broke out. Within seconds the teaspoon dropped to the floor, ignored.
“Ruffian!” Amelia exclaimed.
“Pernickitator,” Caleb retorted.
“That’s not a real word!”
“See what I mean?”
Tiny blue flames of magic began to flicker along the spoon’s handle. In response, books tumbled from shelves, and the lamp’s glass shade melted.
“You are outrageous!” Amelia declared. She almost skidded on the teaspoon, and Caleb caught her by one elbow to steady her. “You are obnoxious!” she added, pulling from his grip.“You are overly opinionated!”
“And you’ve clearly spent ages consulting a thesaurus to describe me. It’s highly suggestive.” He raised his eyebrows, but when Amelia lowered hers in a frown, he retreated. In doing so, he accidentally kicked the teaspoon. It went skittering across the floor, trailing sparks and making historians leap from its path.
“Being suggestive is thepurposeof a thesaurus,” Amelia said.
“You should try poetry instead.”
The teaspoon clattered. Sausage rolls began levitating off the buffet table.
“You are a beetle-headed, flap-ear’d knave!” Amelia shouted, driven to the Shakespearean level of insults.
Thud thud thud.More books fell off their shelves or flew across the room, pages flapping, to slam against a wall. Historians ducked behind armchairs or cowered beneath desks. Beaulieu emitted a high-pitched scream and fainted into Dummersby’s arms.
“Better that than a stinging wasp!” Caleb retorted.
Amelia blasted him with her fiercest stare, the one she usually reserved for students who claimed three grandmothers’ funerals in one year. The usual pretense at enmity was escalating out of control, just as it had in the Ashmolean when a curator came upon them standing close together while they inspected the candlestick. She could not understand why, any more than she could stop it. Arguing with Caleb was beginning to have the same effect on her that the divine right of kings had on England’s Parliament, and she couldn’t seem to restore her calm head.
Suddenly the teaspoon leaped up, spinning as if it were stirring the air. Flares of blue light and fire burst from it. The historians began to shout and push one another as they made a dash for the exit. Finally noticing, Amelia turned to stare at the spoon with trepidation. Beside her, Caleb did the same.
“What’s its power?” he asked from the side of his mouth.
“Intense combustion in response to environmental discord,” Amelia said.
They glanced at each other with a silentoh, damn…
—
As the explosionboomed through the Minervaeum, its staff sighed wearily and went to fetch the ever-present water buckets.
Chapter Two
There are two sides to every story.
And usually, they’re both wrong.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
“It was allmy fault,” Caleb confessed to Professor Ottersock with an apologetic smile, two days later in Oxford. “Miss Tarrant is entirely innocent. Indeed, she is a victim of my bad behavior and should not be included in any blame.”
