“If they do, they will be disappointed. I read how to avoid getting eaten by them, in Barrett’s paper on thinned spots and their effects on flora and fauna. You have to draw a circle around yourself,” she said, one hand reaching into the pocket of her nightgown as she did. For the stick of chalk she always carried now, just in case.
His eyes dropped to it, and for a second she thought she saw a hint of begrudging admiration there. But it passed pretty fast. “That won’t work on me, though, bookworm. And even if you somehow manage to keep my conscious parts at bay with threats of tattling, there are other parts that no longer listen quite as intently to anything like reason,” he said; then just in case the meaning wasn’t clear, he let his gaze drop to her throat.
And that gaze turned black fast.
She actually got to see it go from a deep brown to something darker. Something that swallowed his pupils and spread to the whites. After a moment, there was nothing but inky black there. Though still, she couldn’t quite believe it.
“You cannot possibly be saying what I think you are.”
“And what is it that you think that I am saying, Mina?”
“That you don’twantto kill me. But oh no, oh dear me, addiction to that one taste of my blood might make you... So I betterleave here before you snap and sink your teeth in again,” she said in a singsong sort of voice.
It had no effect on him, however.
“If what I’m saying wasn’t true, I could have just stuck with finding you annoying and wanting you to leave. I don’t need to invent other reasons that I want rid of you.”
“Yeah, but this way you don’t look too weak to act, stalling all this time and fearful of repercussions you had to at least imagine I knew about. You look like you’re just valiantly trying to resist the siren song of my blood, and any second you might actually snap, against all sense and reason. So I better still be afraid.”
There, she thought.That wraps up everything in a neat bow.Though he didn’t seem to think so. “This is not a ruse, you little fool, designed just to get rid of you the easy way. And telling yourself it is will only put you in more danger.”
“If you really cared about the danger I was in,youwould go.”
“I think you know we cannot usually leave the boundaries of places like this.”
“So then return to Calabaraia. Go out through a door there to some other country, where they don’t have all the rules and treaties and regulations we do.”
“Believe me, I would if I could.”
He slapped that invisible barrier as he spat out those words. Genuinely frustrated, it looked like to her. And she knew what that meant, even if she wasn’t sure she could fully believe it. “If you’re trying to say you stayed in the real world too long—” she started to say, but he cut in before she got to the end of her eye roll.
“Ididstay too long. And now I cannot go back. I am stuck here, in the grounds of this horrid place, and I will always be. Butyouaren’t. You can escape any time you like, and I highly recommend you do. You are simply not equipped to survive me, or any of the things here that are already out to get you. Hell, you’re barely equipped for practical lessons. You almost died trying to save some fool. You can’t gather. What are you going to do when it gets to the next term? They’re not going to wait for you to read a book. They’ll push you out of a window and expect you to fly.”
“And did it ever occur to you that I don’t care?”
“It’s madness to not. Complete and utter madness.”
“Not if magic is worth more to me than my life.”
She said the words before she could think them. Too fiercely too, too full of feeling. Like in the library, over the books. Only this time, she had to face his scornful expression in the aftermath. She had to look at him, as he mocked her.
Though it was a strange sort of mocking, she had to say.
His eyes flared wide. He went to speak, then stopped. And when he did, she got one of those flashes. Strong, this time, so strong it made her feel sick. She tried to bat the image away immediately, just to keep the nausea down.
But it lingered. She could still see it behind her eyes, as he replied: the man with the same dimple as him, grabbing her by the back of her dress over some sort of precipice. The edge of a building maybe. She heard him say something—laugh, it sounded like.Laugh, you have to laugh.And then it was gone.
And he suddenly looked as smug as ever. “Well, then. You had better start really thinking about how you’re going to survive,” he said. Arms folded over his chest. Expression almost bored, and certainly infuriating.
It made it very easy to argue back.
“I’ll use everything I’m doing now. It seems to be working just fine.”
“Tricks like that won’t hold me forever, Mina. You have to know that.”
“So I’ll find magic that will.”
“Not fast enough to fight me off.”
