“Okay, enough of that,” he said, already shaking off the seriousness of their conversation. “Show me some stars, Professor.”
Chapter 25
That night, Riya’s desk was a war zone.
Her Caltech essay blinked mockingly on one side of the screen, cursor hovering mid-sentence, while a dozen tabs crowded the other: magical forums, botched-spell recovery guides, grainy scanned pages from dusty peri texts. Her notebook was splayed across her keyboard, filled with cramped handwriting, erratic diagrams, threadwork theories. Her eyes burned from lack of sleep.
Nothing was working. No loopholes. No easy outs.
She was ready to post on that godforsaken peri message board again when her phone began to vibrate.
The name that flashed across her screen made her jump out of her chair. She dove onto her bed, snatching the phone before the call could go to voice mail.
“Hello?” she said, breathless.
“Hey, kiddo! Mind explaining to me why you leftnineteenvoice mails on my phone?”
Riya’s grip on the phone tightened, her body collapsing in on itself.“Sirahkhala.”
She’d almost given up hope, even after finally deciding to reach out.
But it seemed her perseverance had finally paid off.
“Anyway, I was on retreat in Sodankylä,” Sirah khala said. “No signal, barely any electricity. Just me and a bunch ofoverly friendly reindeer. I got back, turned on my phone, and thought someone had died.” Her voice softened. “What’s going on? Tell meeverything.”
So Riya did. The words poured out of her in a rush as she recounted everything: Kian breaking Mel’s mousetrap car, the botched love spell, and how it had all spiraled into a curse she couldn’t undo.
She was out of breath when she finished. But only silence followed.
“How long ago did this start?” Sirah asked after a beat.
“Twenty days.”
“That means you don’t have much time. Ten days, right? And the longer a curse sits, the deeper it settles.”
Riya swallowed hard. “Yeah. I know.”
Sirah khala sighed. “You do have a talent for finding trouble with magic, don’t you?”
There was no anger in it. Just recognition. Or resignation.
“I’m... sorry,” said Riya.
“Hey, enough of that. How areyouholding up?”
Riya’s breath hitched, and for a moment, heat prickled behind her eyes. “I’m all right. I just... want to fix it.”
“And the boy? How bad is it?”
“Not as bad as it could be.”
“And you said you didn’t know him at all before this?”
“Correct.”
There was a pause on the other line, then a thoughtful murmur: “That’s unusual.”
“What’s unusual?” asked Riya. “Besides literally everything about this situation.”
