CHAPTER THREE
The council meeting room was in an oft-neglected part of Ludlow House. Over a plush rug sat a long, rough-hewn wooden table. On the walls were old black-and-white photographs of Ludlow Ranch from when it had operated as an actual ranch: cowboys herding cattle, horses grazing in front of the mesas. Sconces laid a warm yellow glow onto bookshelves filled with books of Magic.
A woman was already seated inside, knitting needles floating in the air behind her, lazily completing the sleeve of her cardigan—Dr. Amy Nguyen, Professor of Comparative Literature and faculty president of the knitting club. Streaks of white hair ran through her messy bun.
“Ah, the dimidiums.* Was wondering when we’d be seeing you again. The other half of you, at least.”
Max didn’t just happen to know what I was feeling in the hallway by chance. We weren’t each other’s objects; people couldn’t be objects, but our Magic was inextricably bonded, like two halves of a whole. Alone, we could barely manage the simplest of spells. But together, as dimidiums needed to be, our Magic had garnered itself a bit of a reputation. It was the reason he’d volunteered every time Robetresse had asked me to come back. Because if I came back, so did his Magic.
Max smiled and touched the brim of his hat. I said a brief hello before letting the thick strands of the Wall envelop me in my own private cocoon.
We were an odd pairing, I knew. The quiet, studious girl from the country and the lovable cowboy. I was the half that didn’t fit, the person content to fade into the background, typing up our research, while the beautiful part of our duo flashed his smile and made the crowd swoon.
The door opened, and one by one, the rest of the council members trickled in. A man in his seventies with a long, white, frizzy beard grunted in our direction.
Dr. Ellendale de Vries, Dean of the Numerology and Mathematics Department, and more frequently nursing a foul temper than a good one. He took a seat at the far end of the table from Dr. Nguyen, for they harbored a long-standing, mutual grudge, and took out his abacus, scribbling down notes on a piece of paper.
Behind him trotted bookish, mild-mannered Lucas Perez, head of the Archaeology and Arcane Artifacts Department. In his spare time, he ran an antiques shop with his wife where they studied the objects of people long dead, trying to determine if Magic could persist through death. I looked down as his eyes zeroed in on mine. He’d offered me a fellowship right before I left town.
A dark-haired teaching assistant I didn’t know sat behind Ellendale, and shortly after came Maritza.
Last to enter, sweeping into the room in her signature lavender, steel-toed boots, was Dr. Thea Robetresse. She wore a huge handsaw* on a strap across her back and had amber tips to her box braids that looked a little like wood grain itself, going from ebony to oak to light ash. She had a good-natured laugh and was known to her students as kind, with a philanthropic spirit uncommon in the Magic community. However, since opening the school, she’d become more withdrawn from the public eye. It seemed the years of attention and rumors of a past with experimental Magic at Britton College of the Arcane had taken their toll. These days, she preferred to concentrate on her foundation, which was focused on discovering Magical ability in underrepresented communities and recruiting more Black Magicians across the country to attend S&B.
In all, there were eight of us in the room—eight of the arguably most capable Magicians alive.*
“On the evening of April first,” Robetresse began, “Maya Hagood was found on the floor of her dorm room with thirty-six stab wounds across her body. Lacerations covered nearly forty percent of her: face, arms, chest. The detectives who saw the body said it was one of the most brutal acts they’d seen in Marble County in over a decade.
“I’ve called you all here to discover why one of our students is responsible, Danica Stewart.” Dr. Robetresse turned on the projector at the front of the room and put up a picture of a smiling young blond woman.
“And what—or who—made her end up like this.”
She put another picture on the screen, and there were sharp intakes of breath throughout the room. Maritza looked away.
It was a picture of the floating girl, now. The tendons in her neck were strained as she arched into an unnatural position, her lips chewed raw, an angry flare to her nostrils as she caught sight of the camera. Dark circles created shadows beneath her eyes so that she looked not quite human. Whatever she was now, it was a world away from the girl in the first picture.
“Jesus, Thea,” Ellendale said, averting his eyes.
Dr. Robetresse continued as if she didn’t hear him. “We were able to temporarily hide the levitation by strapping her to the bed. We told the police she was too violent to move. She also wasn’t speaking in any tongue we could understand, so they were inclined to believe us. A religious bunch themselves, they weren’t too keen on bringing her to the station. Said it was best to keep her here until she calmed down enough to take her in for questioning.”
She looked around at us. She had this way of looking right through you, like she saw everything you were trying to hide. Her gaze landed on the empty seat at the end of the table. Apparently, someone was missing.
“In the meantime, they’ve sent the priest from Saint Mary’s to offer his assistance, though I don’t know what assistance he has in mind other than the exorcism he’s been champing at the bit to perform.”
I grimaced. It was certainly no good having a priest around, particularly one who belonged to a small-town parish. People in small towns liked to talk.
“An exorcism?” Max asked, eyes wide. “They actually do those?”
“I don’t have to remind you why something of this nature would be bad for all of us if it got out,” Dr. Robetresse said.
“I can just picture the headlines now,” Ellendale said, throwing his hands up, causing strands of his hair to wobble like they were tiny springs. “‘Possession at college where students dabble in dark arts.’ ‘Angry mob demands investigation of Devil school!’ Doesn’t matter if most of the world has relegated the idea of Magicians to con artists and stage performers; they’ll be at our gates with pitchforks.”
Ellendale’s abacus clicked. “Basile,” he barked at the teaching assistant behind him, “pay attention.”
Dr. Robetresse nodded. “Which is why I’d like to get Danica’s condition reversed as quickly as possible. Truth be told, I fear the Marble County Police Department will be supportive of the priest’s wishes, and I don’t know how long I can hold off the police and the Church. Once she’s back to normal, we can just say it was shock that caused her condition … and not what we know must be of Magical origins.”
Maritza opened her mouth to protest, but Thea raised her hand. “I will not be entertaining any thoughts to the contrary.” She lowered her voice. “We’ve discussed this, Maritza.”
Maritza leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “The Devil’s boots don’t creak.”
