Speaking in languages unknown to the person
Levitation (less common)
Seizures (less common)
Death
But it didn’t tell us what to do in order to break a hex or give any useful way of telling who the caster might have been, so we were more or less back where we started.
“This is hopeless,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“Ah, we can do this, Cel. We can. We’ve just gotta put our heads together.”
I raised a brow at the earnest determination in his eyes. When there was something he cared about, Max was like a dog with a bone. Though his motives weren’t such a mystery, I knew he wanted to keep me happy, because if I stayed, so did his Magic, but I couldn’t help but smile at his unwavering conviction that we could do this, that we could fix this whole mess. I doubted he’d ever had a problem he couldn’t flirt or charm his way out of. I just didn’t know how to tell him this wasn’t one of them.
I still remembered the first time I saw Max after I’d learned he was my dimidium. I’d happened on the concept by luck, in the second half of my sophomore year of undergrad. In one of our classes, we had a reading that included a mention of dimidiums as a reason for “inefficiency of spells.” Dimidium, roughly translated as “half”—one half of your Magical soul. Legend said it meant you had a broken soul. Supposedly there was one person, and only one, who was the missing piece to fix it again. People in the Golden Age of Magic* spent their whole lives searching for their dimidiums.† The search for a dimidium used to be more of a thing back then, but when Magic got shoved to the occult section and relegated to the musings of the mentally unstable or those on their way to it, people in the community decided a search for your Magical soulmate was a little too on the nose, and it entered into a rather extensive period of being out of style.
I didn’t know if that was what was wrong with my Magic or not until my advisor called me in to talk to him. Apparently, the school kept a record of every student’s objects, as well as entries for dimidiums.
And there he was listed, plain as day: Maximilian Middlemore.
“Max?”I yelped. “You’re telling me my dimidium is Max?”
I’d never spoken to him, but I knew him by reputation. From the guys, how fast he could rope cattle; from the girls, how he was smoother than a shot of whiskey. Half the girls in my year were obsessed with him.
I’d fretted over it all week. I had no idea how to broach the subject, didn’t know if he would laugh in my face or simply ignore me. I found him in the courtyard, wearing a tan cowboy hat, tattoos peeking out of his shirtsleeves. He was perched on a retaining wall beside an acacia tree, biting into an apple.
I walked over to him, every ounce of my body bristling with excitement. As I got closer, I decided: the hell with it, I didn’t need a script to talk to him. We were two halves of the same soul. We were mystically connected. He’d know me as soon as he saw me, I was sure of it.
“I suppose you’ve been waiting for me,” I said, hands on my hips, striking a Wonder Woman pose in front of him. “Well … here I am.”
He cocked his head. “Come again?”
“Your dimidium, of course.” I mean, obviously he’d done the reading. I’d checked his schedule; we were in the same class. Any dimidium of mine would naturally have completed the assignment.
He squinted. “This some kind of sex thing?”
“What?” Surely he’d done the reading? “A sex thing?”
“Yeah, I recognize you,” he drawled. “You’re in that sex group, right? Fighting for free sexual expression, and everything? More power to you, though I don’t think I’m exactly up for it …? You might try my friend Cody. He’s a bit more adventurous in that regard.”
Sex group? All the air fizzled out of me. “I’m not in any sex—you must have me mistaken with someone else.”
“No, it was definitely you. You know! From the party in the courtyard.”
I wracked my brain to figure out what the hell he was talking about. “Are you talking about the Women’s Rights Collective? It’s a reproductive rights group, not a sex group. And it was arally.”
“The hair!” He snapped his fingers. “I knew I recognized the hair.”
“Not a sex group—” I paused, looking at the expectant look in his eyes, the raised eyebrows, the resolute confidence. “Oh my God, you think I came over here to proposition you, don’t you?”
“And I have to tell you, I am so flattered.”
I threw up my hands, outraged and thoroughly embarrassed. This—this person couldn’t possibly be half of my soul. “There has to have been some kind of mistake,” I muttered. “There’s no way I could be tied to some narcissistic, self-obsessed, blockheaded cowherder who didn’t even do the reading.” I stormed off across the courtyard before he could say anything else.
Unfortunately for me, there was no mistake. I checked the database three times. Then I double-checked with both of our advisors. So two days later, there I was, dragging my feet across the courtyard back to him, cursing the universe for not just tying me to some dead scholar. Or, like, a dog.
His eyebrows raised when he saw me. “Sex girl! She’s back! Lovely to see you again.”
