She would have let herself be buried by all this paper and ink.
She barely paused for breath when she got to the right section. She grabbed ten books without even paying much attention to the titles. Clutched them to her, all higgledy-piggledy, one of them falling as she maneuvered to the table set between the stacks. She snagged it as she sat down, and set it next to the biggest haul she’d ever managed in her life.
The closest before this was the time she’d visited her cousins in Essex, and they had a library nearby. But that had been tattered paperbacks, full of secondhand tales of whatever people thought actual magic was like.
This was the real deal.
These were tomes bound in leather and filled to the brim with things she had only been able to guess at before. Like the fact that several natural disasters had indeed been averted by magic—the slide of the Handermore shelf into the Atlantic, the flood that threatened California, the asteroid that almost took out Melbourne. Hints at other things, in places on the other side of the various schisms.
All spells, all kept under the shroud of secrecy that countries held over their magic use.
Or beneath a code of silence enforced against a population.
If you find you want to share with anyone not under the auspices of the magical authorities, or speak of magic to anyone ordinary, you will find you cannot, she read, in a chapter of a book calledGreat Deeds of the Twentieth Century.Your words will get lost in your mouth, your messages will dissolve to nothing, your screens will turn to static.
And from what she could see, that was how most things seemed to work. You could learn if you were allowed here. You could make yourself great and perform feats within certain setparameters. But you could never share beyond what was set by the authorities.Those who decide that a fancy bandstand in Windermere should be saved from collapse but a tower block shouldn’t, she thought, as she scoured the pages for something less bitter and more useful.
And she found it.
It was in the third book she devoured, midway through a chapter on defeating creatures that your professor could allow through a rip in the fabric of reality to randomly murder you.Werebeasts can be repelled by common stinging nettles if harvested in areas where the veil between the Underneath and the real world has grown thin, she had written breathlessly, in the notepad she’d already filled with all kinds of hints and tips and facts.
And then there it was.
If a denizen of the Underneath has attached itself to you, you may find your mind affected. Concentration can prove abruptly difficult, memory is often affected, in extreme cases the divide between reality and dreams could begin to erode, she read, and felt a great rush of adrenaline go through her as she did. Suddenly her heart was thudding, heavily enough to almost hurt. Her mouth went dry; hair prickled where she hadn’t even realized hair was.
And not just because that seemed to describe her exact situation.
There was also what it said at the end of the paragraph.
Even the most advanced student will struggle to fend off certain creatures.Then even more troubling:The help of faculty should be enlisted. Because the problem was—what could she say? What could she report? He didn’t outwardly look like something that came from that shadowy place. And if he did, somehow, nobody seemed to know it. Nobody seemed suspicious.
Even though there were other things that fit.
The poison, she thought. The poison should have made people wonder.
But it hadn’t.
And that meant one thing and one thing alone.He’s popular and important enough that they don’t want to face it, they don’t want to hear it, if you say anything they’ll hate you, not him, her mind whispered, in a way she couldn’t really argue with. So now she had to reckon with the fact that she was in even more danger than she had first thought. Tell and she’d be in trouble on two fronts. Keep it to herself, and she was going to have to fight something potentially unfightable.
Despite the fact that she could barely fight at all.
She’d only managed magic that one single time in the maze, and had no clue why that was the case. What she had done differently then, to what she had tried at other times. It had felt just as clumsy as it had when the fireball had almost hit her. Just as clumsy as it did now, as she brought her hands together.
Clumsier even.
Of courseit had been clumsier. She had done it with him between her legs. With his face above hers, expression so full of fury and loathing it had made her hands shake. It had made them fumbly and frantic. They hadn’t locked together perfectly; she knew they hadn’t.
But the spark had happened all the same.
So what had been different?When I want it to happen, I just picture the top of the maze, the darkness, the way it made me feel when it bloomed in my hand, Anaya had said to her, as they tried to get her out of that damned tree. So she closed her eyes and attempted just that. Tried to think of every detail, every nuance, every feeling. The shadow slanting across his face, cutting it cleanly in two. His hand on the stone by her head, close enough that she had felt his thumb brush her cheek.
Or had it been the charged air between his skin and hers?
She didn’t know. She only understood the sensation that seemed to flood her, when she closed her eyes and thought of it. When she slowed her breathing and considered his face. Something seemed to part or open inside her, and through it flowed that strange kind of warmth. That silvery feeling, like her veins were filling up with mercury. Then she opened her eyes, and oh.
There was a glowing flower in her cupped hands.
Beautiful, glorious—she could have wept to see it.
