He stood up, and I lost all my resolve. I had to look nearly straight up to speak with him, and for some reason my eyes were drawn straight to the muscles in his shoulders, to his forearms. He was standing closer than was perhaps appropriate; I could feel the heat radiating off his body. It made my stomach do strange little backflips.
“Still not a sex group.” I cleared my throat. “Yeah, so, slight misunderstanding the other day. I’m not here toproposition you. We’re—well, don’t you know what—”
He took a bite of his apple and watched me with a bemused smile. “Use your words.”
I blushed furiously, trying to explain.
His lips spread into a slow, devilish grin. “You know, I was thinking about our conversation …”
My mouth fell open. “Oh my God, no. It’s not like that! We’re—”
“Dimidiums,” he said. “I asked my advisor about it. Marcella Gibbons, right? I’m Max. Pleasure to meet you, honey.”
I sank down onto the wall. “You could’ve said something.”
“Ah, but I’m just a narcissistic, self-obsessed, blockheaded cowherder. What could I do?” He grinned sheepishly, then pulled out a book of spells. “I was thinking we could start with this one. If you’re still up for it, of course.”
My mouth opened and closed in quick succession.
The corner of his mouth quivered. “Deep breaths.” He seemed to enjoy watching me squirm (some things never change, I suppose).
“Yes,” I managed at last. “Now, let me see that.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Iwas chasing down a tip that only ended in another dead end while Max tried to sweet-talk a lady in the Admin office into letting him see the security-camera footage near Strauss’s office. On my way back, I slipped into one of my favorite classes back when I was at school, Ancient Magic and the Roots of Christianity, taught by Dr. Perez.*
I’d always been deeply interested in religion, but my relationship with Christianity was tremulous at best, unlike the people of Marble County, who lived and breathed God. The evidence was clear on any building, on any street corner, with a cross embedded above the door, in the malign gaze of any townsfolk who spat in the direction of the demented college kids. Even with Magic, our disguise as an agricultural school wasn’t exactly infallible. The school couldn’t afford farming equipment, so we had no tractors on campus, no granary, no animals. Only the workers on the far side of the property, a few apple orchard groves and what they could tease out of the dry earth. Even to my eyes, our disguise was a bit lacking. The people of Marble County weren’t fools; they knew there was something unnatural going on at our school. The relationship between town and school had been shaky for decades. But then, Magic and Christianity had been at each other’s throats for thousands of years now, so that was nothing new.
Dr. Perez had short salt-and-pepper hair and alternated his attire between gray suits and emerald or sapphire-blue cardigans. On his pinky, he wore a stout emerald ring—one of his objects was a gemstone. Dr. Perez was a quiet man, but when he got going about anthropology topics, he could get quite spirited. Now his voice boomed through the lecture hall.
“Tell me, class, what is the difference between a miracle and Magic?”
“No? How about another? Why is Jesus not referred to as a Magician?”
The classroom was silent as students shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
“After all, any classic study of what he did—turning water to wine, exorcising demons, healing the sick—to me looks a lot like what Magic can do.” He came out from behind the podium, walking in front of the first row of students. “Nothing? I want to know. Is it optics? Is it that he didn’t wear a pointy hat and carry a staff?”
A guy laughed. “No, he … it was just different.”
“Different?” he challenged, “Why? After all, it’s not as if Magicians are absent from Christianity. Simon Magus ring a bell? A Magician referenced in the Bible, Simon levitates, even heals people, like Jesus, and yet Simon Magus is depicted as a bombastic drunkard, a charlatan. Why? Why is Simon Magus called a Magician, as if it’s a dirty word, while Jesus is something else entirely: a performer of miracles, a wonder-worker? Why has the Church gone to such lengths to create a contrast between miracles and Magic, to contrast the good Christian miracle workers against the evil-doing Magicians in cahoots with demons?
“Because,” he said, turning quickly back to the board, where he wrote and underlinedMagic is in the eye of the beholder,“the similarity between Magic and Jesus’s miracles wasn’t lost on ancient people. In fact, in the third century, a pagan philosopher made the very charge that Jesus was a Magician and compared him to a marketplace charlatan. A Roman emperor said the apostles practiced Magic. But Jesus couldn’t be Magic—no, no, no. Jesus’s power was divine, not demonic.”
Dr. Perez’s eyes darted across the classroom, looking for someone to challenge him. I looked at all the students ducking their heads down, pretending to be diligently taking notes. How different my life had turned out than I had thought when I myself first sat in this class. How thoroughly off the rails it had all gone.
“Christianity waged a battle for religious authority for thousands of years. Magic was used as a weapon, a spearhead for the Church to attack its enemies and a way to target outsiders. Rival religious groups were labeled sorcerers working with demons. The charge of Magic became a way to attack political opponents and other rivals.* Magical books were targeted in book burnings, reducing our history to ashes. Who knows how much of our history and knowledge of Magic was lost when that literature was destroyed?
“Roman emperors decreed that private soothsaying was akin to treason; secret rituals and cults were viewed as a threat to their rule. Those guilty of the Magic art were to be either crucified or thrown to the beasts. Magicians were to be burned alive.† People with books of Magic had their books publicly burned, and they were exiled. People like us withdrew into private mystery schools or cults for protection, passing their knowledge in secret or hoarding it among themselves while the Church attacked Magic mercilessly until the very idea of performing Magic was considered as evil as a pact with the Devil himself. Until it was hounded to the very edge of its existence. In this class, I want you to understand what happened to us, and the lengths they went to for power, for control.”
“And then what?” a brave student in the front row asked. “I mean it’s not as if we can erase everything that happened.”
Dr. Perez smiled, looked around at the rest of the room, a storm brewing in his eyes. “And then, we rebuild.”
As I was leaving the classroom, I stopped.
A woman walked toward me down the hallway. Her black hair draped long and thick down her back, and large brown eyes, the kind that didn’t miss an inch, cut across the floor before homing in on me. Her lips were the color of a desert rose against her light brown complexion, and a tattoo of a juniper tree covered her bicep. She seemed to have gotten prettier in the years since I’d seen her, if that was even possible. I’m sure she was every bit aware of that fact.
