Then he held his breath. His eyes darted left and right, searching for signs of said creatures suddenly appearing. He even looked up, as if they might somehow spring from the ceiling. And only when nothing seemed to appear did he let out a relieved breath. It was almost a low whistle, and it ended on a chuckle.
Lots of people chuckled, in fact.As if such a thing was really going to happen, that ripple of noise said. But that just made it more shocking when a great ripping sound shot through the hall, on the end of it. A wrenching, terrible thing, that made Mina think of bodies being split in two.
Even though the lad was still in one piece. He scrambled up out of his seat, without a scratch on him, and seemed to run for the door for reasons that were not yet clear to her. But then he tripped, hard enough that she winced and looked away, before his face could smack into the lecture hall floor. And as her headturned, she saw it. Not a thing from the ceiling, or the walls, or out of the end of Hargreaves’s wand. From below, it came. Like all the stories said about the Underneath—only worse, more frightening, weirder.
It was a hairy, clawed hand shoved right through the seat he’d just been sitting in. It must have sprouted up right between his legs, she thought, like an intensely weird and brutal plant. Then as he’d fled, it had obviously grabbed hold of his ankle, and now here he was, sprawled on the floor, nose bleeding, words babbling out of him. “No, please, I didn’t mean to get it wrong,” he said.
But Hargreaves only watched as impassively as a person waiting for a bus, when the wrong one goes by. It made her heart pound to see that face—more than the hairy hand did, more than the way it was grabbing him, more than the sound of him screaming, more than everyone around him trying to get out of the way.
Because in the maze, it had been possible to pretend that professors were watching and waiting to step in if things got too terrible. But here it wasn’t. Here she just had to watch as something bristling with tooth and claw dragged him into the hole it had come from, one slow agonizing inch at a time.
First his feet went.
Then his legs.
And finally all that was left were his hands, scrabbling at the tufted, torn edges of the seat the monster had burst through. The last thing Mina saw were the whites of his knuckles, his splintering nails. A single person reaching for him, the way she wanted to, before fear made them snap their hand back, and shake it as if it were covered in bugs.
For all Mina knew, itwas.
Nightmare bugs from the depths of the Underneath.
Brought here by a deranged Q&A with a deadly end.
And this was just thetheoryclasses. The Autumn term was supposed to be simple history, the basics of gathering magic and what it could be applied to, possible career paths. But instead there were apparently quizzes with deadly consequences. Questions that could lead you astray.
Christonly knew what was going to happen when it got to the Spring term, and intensive practical classes started. She’d read a little about it—that the first thing they did after Christmas was see if you’d managed to learn how to fly. But now she was starting to think that the description after it hadn’t been a joke. That they really did just push you out of a fifth-floor door, and if you hadn’t cobbled together the skills to do it, you plummeted to your death.
Horrible, she thought.
Though she was at least grateful that she knew it, now.
That she’d had some sort of idea about all of this, before.
It was extremely clear that no one else did. That none of them had done any reading at all.
She suspected that was the reason they looked caught between being frozen, and throwing up. Like they’d all thought they were relatively safe after the Brawl, and were very quickly learning that this was not the case.Everythinghere was harrowing, absolutely everything, and it didn’t pause because you didn’t know. It didn’t pause because you hadn’t studied.
A fact that seemed to take hold of them, next. Some of them sank back into their seats, in the tortured silence that followed, and tried to find their books. She saw the title on one—a tome she’d read most of the night before,The Complete Compendium of Creatures. And she was glad she had, because no sooner had a girlopened it, then Hargreaves jerked her wand in her direction, and the book slapped back closed.
Fast, too. So fast it almost took off the ends of the girl’s fingers.
“I do not recall saying you might use study aids. Now, next: wraiths,” Hargreaves said. And a ripple of pure panic went through the room. Someone stood as if to leave, but Hargreaves stopped them with one whipcrack of a look. They shrank under its glare.
Then she made them say it. Yes to wraiths. Or no?
At which point, Mina almost stood herself and shouted it out. She knew what beings like that were. She understood what they could do. And she could stop this with a word; she was sure she could. In fact, the answer was on the tip of her tongue when she felt it.
Suddenly around her upper arm, tight and cold as an iron cuff created in some icy wasteland, and so forceful she barely made it an inch from her seat. She didn’t even manage a breath.
He stopped it with his other hand.
Right.
Over.
Her mouth.
“You think if you try to save them, it’ll work? You think this place recognizes things like justice and heroism? She’ll have you butchered instead, and me with you for having the bad fortune to be sitting at your side,” he hissed, so close to her ear she felt his wintry breath trail over the side of her face, a cruel caress.
