I squinted. Magic didn’t tell on itself. To be honest, a lot of what Max said was nonsense, but that didn’t seem to matter. I’d dubbed it the Max Middlemore Effect. The others nodded sagely at him, as if it made all the sense in the world. The only one who paid me any mind was Robetresse.
I didn’t blame them. I sat there in my Bee Kind shirt and pink jellies, with my hair ballooning to epic proportions, and wondered if anyone would notice if I left. After all, Max had been getting by just fine on his own for the last five years. He’d bullshit a little, get help from some starry-eyed freshman, and stumble into a solution, like he always did. No reason for me to even be here.
I was pulling up the route home on my phone when I realized Robetresse was talking to me.
“The priest said she spoke to you. What did she say?”
“Oh.” I hesitated. She also smiled creepily at me and winked, but I wasn’t about to tell them that. “She said, ‘Nothing ever changes.’”
I heard the mutterings of the others in the room trying the words out. “Nothing ever changes,” they repeated.
I looked around the table at the inquisitive glances, as if they’d just noticed me sitting there.
“Maybe it would be better if someone else …”
“You’ll keep trying, won’t you?” Robetresse asked. “That’s the most progress we’ve had in days.”
My eyes flickered past them and landed instead on Max, who met my gaze with an unabashedly hopeful look of his own.
I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “Oh. Um, okay.” I tried to look more confident than I felt. I’d never had cause to doubt Dr. Robetresse’s judgment before. If she thought we could do it, I wanted to believe her. “We’ll do our best.”
As I was leaving, Dr. Robetresse asked Max and me to follow her to her office.
Dr. Robetresse cared deeply about propelling Magic into a new era, one where it wasn’t hoarded among the wealthy in private institutions or kept locked behind expensive tutors. She’d left her career at Britton Arcane to open the first public university of Magic, where Magic was safer to use and open to all—and taken a lot of criticism for it. She’d done a lot for me and a lot for Magic, and though I hadn’t wanted to take one step into Marble County again, I found it hard to say no to her.
She sat down behind a huge, wood-carved desk. “Thank God for you two. Ellendale and Amy will never be able to agree on a course of action; they disagree with each other for sport. And we don’t have the time for it.”
She pulled out a checkbook, and my eyes zeroed in on the little numbers she filled in with her pen. “Half now. Half when it’s done,” she said, before handing one to each of us. I could’ve cried tears of joy.
“That’s why I’m giving you two full rein over your investigation,” she continued. “Ellendale says there’s too much potential to draw the Arbiters, but there were rumblings of an inappropriate relationship between a council member and a student long before all this. I don’t want anything overlooked.”
“Was there anyone who had a problem with either of the girls?” Max asked. “Anyone who might’ve wished them harm?”
“Not that I was able to find, though there were some issues with a previous roommate of Dani’s, Joselyn Hart. I take it she moved out some months before the incident.”
She glanced quickly at a telescope in the corner. “I also have one of Danica Stewart’s objects here … though I hesitate to touch the thing. The other council members objected to even having it in the room, so it’s been here since the incident. According to Ms. Stewart’s advisor, her other object is Polaris, more commonly known as the North Star. Obviously, we don’t have physical access to a celestial body, but Dr. Strauss will know more.”
Just looking at the lone brass telescope, dark and looming in the corner, I understood her discomfort. There was something unsettling about it. Its tarnish had faded to a dusky ochre, and the Magic around it felt hollow and expectant, like a mouth open wide.
“What about the third?” I asked.
“Undiscovered, according to our records.”*
I nodded. “We’ll learn what we can.”
“Good. Well then, I trust you two to keep us apprised of the situation. I’m confident in your strength as dimidiums, in light of any potential threat.” She hesitated, clearly uncomfortable with said threat, but we understood her meaning.
If, by some chance, Dani attacked us, the Magic of two people combined would always be stronger than one.
“One last thing.” She handed me a small blue journal. “The staff found this in Dani’s room. I’ve looked through it myself, but I couldn’t make sense of it. Maybe you two will find something I couldn’t. Good luck,” she said and then swept off down the hall.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DANICA STEWART
FEBRUARY 3RD[TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE MURDER]
And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. (Apostles Acts 19:19)
Facta arguebantur, dicta inpen errant.* Eh, Augustus?
