We sat down in my room, and Bear promptly climbed into Max’s lap, licking his face as readily as if he was his long-lost father.
“I don’t know, Cel, he might have to come home with me. Would you like that, boy?” Bear shook with excitement, and I side-eyed my supposedly loyal companion.
I opened a locked folder on my laptop. It was filled with our old publications that had been published inNew Magic QuarterlyandThe Annual Arcanum. The most recent item was an email from one of our editors asking for clarification on a few points in my most recent piece, “Object Study: Advantages and Disadvantages of Base Materials in the Conveyance of Magic.” It was part of a series we’d been working on, a practical guide on the Magical properties of objects and the relationship with their casters.
When we’d written it, I’d been fascinated by Object Theory. I liked learning about the girl who couldn’t cast through anything except the quilt her grandmother had made for her when she was a baby. The one that was threadbare now, but still smelled like home. Or the boy who collected rocks with his dad as a kid, and now had a geode collection to rival most museums, who cast some of the most wondrous Magic through them, all crystalline and quartz. Or the girl who could only access Magic when she was on the phone with her mom, while her mother whispered affirmations in her ear. “You can do this, honey. You’ve got it. Keep going.” I loved hearing about the stories around people’s objects, because an object only could become an object when it impacted its owner in a strong way.
Weirdly enough, it was studying things that brought me closest to people.
Max scratched behind Bear’s ears and gestured to the telescope. “I didn’t know you could see what spells someone did last.”
“It was something I worked on before I left.”
In my second year of postgrad, after I’d started drifting away, flocking toward ginger-haired Jamie and the others, a new group of friends that filled the hole Max left, who’d cared as much about Magic and the progression of the science as I had. I’d worked on it without Max. “Oh,” he said, too quickly. “Right.”
The silence afterward was filled with too many things that threatened our fragile new truce.
“Not spells, exactly,” I said, stumbling to get my words out. “I developed an analytical model to assess an object and determine the emotional state of the Magician who last cast through it.”
“Huh. Well, damn, that’s pretty cool.”
I smiled, an unexpected surge of pride going through me. While the process worked best with the actual Magician present, you could tell quite a lot just from examining your own response to an object. Where are your thoughts drawn when you look at it? Does it inspire different ideas when you touch the object versus only seeing it? What about smell?
And what about the object itself? Is it coarse or smooth? Does it emit a smell? A sound? Every Magical object I’d ever come into contact with had produced what I called “notes.” They weren’t audible, exactly, and maybe they were just in my head, but this was what I looked for above all.* It was a little like tasting wine. Harsh, sharp, or tangy notes implied a caster full of unease, anxiety, dread. But something softer, more buoyant or joyous, implied the Magician had been experiencing calm. Contentment. Joy.
My eyes traveled to the brass telescope between us. What I was most curious about was how Dani had been feeling before she turned into this … thing. If she’d been frightened, if she knew what was happening to her. I didn’t know what kind of headspace she’d been in to do what she did to Maya, but every nerve in my body rebelled against reaching out to this object and experiencing it myself. Object Theory was an inexact science. I was terrified Dani’s object might pull me under the same malevolent spell that had taken over its owner. If the next time I looked in the mirror, I would see the same blood-red eyes, the wan cheeks.
If I would have to be strapped to the bed, too.
Touching Magic like this, you become aware of the threads in the room. The thrum of Magic beneath my feet, the warmth of Max’s body behind me. All at once, I was aware of his eyes on the back of my neck. Without meaning to, I pulled a cord of his Magic to me, smelled the saddle leather of his horses, felt the wind on my neck, the sun on my face, warm rain on my skin. Just a glimpse, just for a second. I dropped the thread.
“Sorry,” I said, swallowing hard.
“It’s alright,” he said, warm eyes meeting mine. “We’re dimidiums. It’s bound to happen.”
I buried my head back in my notes. Usually, I’d conduct a full interview with the Magician to figure out how the object fit into the broader scope of their life before even looking at the object. Though with Dani’s state, an interview was clearly out of the question. As I jotted down thoughts, my eyes kept flitting back to the telescope. The presence the cold metal took up in the room was visceral, notes swirling around it like a steady, beating pulse.
The thing was old, but still lovingly maintained. From its age and appearance, I’d guessed Dani had gotten the telescope here at school. Which meant Seinford and Brown meant something to her. Maybe this was the first place she’d found belonging or had fallen in love. Maybe she’d found a passion in her studies, just as I had.
The thrum of the telescope got sharper the more I tried to ignore it, swelling until it drowned everything else out.
Max’s lips moved, a crease forming on his forehead. “Cel, something wrong?” Bear whimpered and nudged my knee.
I could barely hear them.
I shook my head, shifting my focus to the telescope. That must’ve been what it was waiting for, because all at once the notes swelled until they sounded like they were coming from every direction. They turned to whispers inside my head, though I couldn’t separate them to determine what they were saying. I felt myself falling through time and space. The air around me went still and lifeless.
When I opened my eyes, I was walking through a forest at night. Only the dimmest glow of stars guided me, the trees’ canopies swallowing all light. Massive pine trees blocked my way, branches scratched at my face, but there was something else, too. The prickling sensation that while I traipsed through the chill undergrowth, scarcely able to see my hand in front of me, someone else was here, watching me. The breath tightened in my chest until I was gasping for air. I slammed my head back, loosening the telescope’s grip and breaking whatever spell it had pulled me under.
Strong hands caught me before I hit the bed frame. Max’s nose was inches from mine, his breath hot on my cheek. “Can you hear me?”
A thousand memories rushed through me. That same hot breath on my skin in his dorm room, dancing on the roof of the Math building after our first journal article was published, our drunken laughter after getting kicked out of a conference because he’d actually tried toduelsomeone who’d offended me. Nights spent at that bar in Albuquerque and ending up tangled in the sheets with him afterward.
Then I blinked, and he cleared his throat.
“What happened?” he asked, as we untangled ourselves from each other.
I sat back, breathing hard, and Bear set to work licking me back to health. “I’m okay. I must’ve—I must have done something wrong. I’ve just never experienced anything that visceral with objects.” There was no denying I was a little rusty.
