My mother pulls out her phone and dials. She speaks in a low, rapid voice, and I catch fragments. Anomaly. Disrupted. Absorbed the entire invocation. Then a pause. Then: Yes. Come immediately.
"Let me guess," I say. "Calling someone to fix the broken null?"
She doesn't answer me. Of course she doesn't.
My father's hand tightens on my arm. "Don't make this harder than it needs to be."
"Oh, I'm sorry. Am I being inconvenient? How terrible for you that your magical disposal unit is malfunctioning."
He lets go, but only because Mara has started crying, and my mother moves to her, and suddenly the room reorganizes itself around Mara's distress the way it always does. Walking out right now is an option. I consider it, standing in the wreckage of the ritual circle with the taste of old magic at the back of my throat, glass dust settling on the floor around my feet.
But I stay, because I want to see who they called. I want to see what they think they're going to do about me now that I'm not just the convenient null anymore.
The knock at the estate's front door comes eleven minutes later. Eleven minutes is fast for someone coming from outside the city. Whoever my mother called was already nearby, or was already expecting this call.
My father opens the door. The quality of silence that follows is the kind that happens when someone walks into a room and changes the air pressure of it without doing anything at all.
Then he appears in the ritual room doorway, and the temperature drops. Not gradually—all at once, like winter stepped inside wearing a man's form. He's tall, lean in the way blades are lean, with black hair and the kind of terrifying beauty that makes you forget to breathe. The death magic rolls off him in waves I can feel against my skin.
His eyes land on me.
"Angelic Fairmont." His voice is flat, precise, a scalpel passing through the silence between us. "You're the anomaly."
"I'm the person standing in front of you, actually. But anomaly works if you're into the whole dehumanizing thing."
Something flickers across his face. Not amusement, exactly. Interest, maybe. "How refreshing. Most people are more intimidated."
"Most people probably have something to lose."
My mother steps forward. "Professor Ashford, thank you for coming so quickly. As I said, there was a disruption during the Awakening ceremony. Our null absorbed the ritual energy. All of it. We don't know what she—"
"I heard you the first time." He hasn't looked away from me. "I don't need the summary."
My mother closes her mouth. Professor Ashford crosses the room without asking permission and stops two feet away from me. Up close, the cold has a signature to it. Death magic. I've read about it in the household's reference texts, the ones I wasn't supposed to touch. Reaper magic.
"How do you feel?" he asks.
"Like my family just tried to use me as a magical conduit and it backfired spectacularly. So, pretty typical Tuesday, honestly."
"That's not what I asked."
"Then ask better questions."
His eyes narrow slightly. "Hold out your hand."
"Why?"
"Because I'm trying to assess what you've absorbed before it kills you."
"Oh. Well, when you put it so charmingly." I hold out my hand. He doesn't touch it, just passes his own hand two inches above my palm. The air between us shifts, darkening briefly.
"She's holding a full ritual invocation," he says, to no one in particular. "Unprocessed. A null body with no channels to move it through." He looks at me again. "You should be dead."
"Sorry to disappoint you."
"You will be if you keep this up. She needs to come with me."
"Excuse me?" I step back. "Nobody asked what I need."
