Page 39 of The Alchemists

“He’s not the person I thought he was.”

She chewed on that for a moment. “People seldom are, I guess. Case in point.” She gestured between them. “I would not have bet on this.”

“Me either,” he chuckled. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. You’re just…easy to talk to.”

No one had ever told her she was easy to talk to.

“It’s because no one talks to me. You don’t have to worry about gossip,” she said bluntly, offering the out.

He considered, gazing at the moon. “I don’t think that’s it. I think you might actually just be secretly cool, Lily Perkins.”

Her insides did a wild dance, all full of leaps and spins.

“How kind of you, Sebastian Allsaires. I think you might actually be secretly not-an-asshole.”

Washed in white moonlight, he pouted. Byronically. “That’s not a secret.”

“It was to me.”

“Touché.” She liked his chuckle, liked coaxing it out of his serious jawline. “Do you want to get together tomorrow? Dance? Alchemy?”

She smiled into the dark as she repeated, “Dance and alchemy.”

“Hard to beat.”

“I’m going hiking with my mom and Gran in the afternoon.”

“Oh,” he said a little too quickly, hiding disappointment that turned to effervescence in her ears. “Well, that’s⁠—”

“I’m free in the evening.” She was glad he couldn’t really see her face, for the stupid grin on it. “I’ll text you.”

“It’s a date.”

He didn’t mean it like that, she knew, but as he walked her back to her bike, she kind of wished he did.

* Vexiliar (1436–1509) was an Ætheric polymath whose work spanned numerous disciplines, but he is best known as the father of modern aegistics. His ideas and inventions are so influential and widely used that he has reached near-mythic proportions in Ætheric Society.

SEB

“Hey, I’ve got—were you napping? It’s almost five.”

Seb raised his chin from his pillow, smearing away the drool, and squinted blearily at Tori, who was standing in his doorway.

“I guess.” He fumbled for his glasses and sat up. “I’ve been sleeping like garbage lately.”

It was true, or at least part of the truth. He’d had the same dream every night this week. In all of them, he lay with his head over the dam watching a reflection of himself drown in Orchard Lake. Overhead, Lily Perkins, limned in silver with a halo of moonlight, wearing gauzy robes—generally looking like a Mucha painting come to life—watched him beneficently from a seat of stars, offering the Chalice of Windermere. Every time he reached up to take it, he sank further into the lake. It wasn’t a bad dream, except for the drowning, and even that wasn’t wholly unpleasant.

The unpleasant part was how he felt upon waking; the embarrassing heat rolling low through his stomach was a shame he couldn’t shower away, and he’d tried. As far as dreams went, the symbolism was puerilely transparent. He didn’t need four hundred dollars’ worth of alchemy books for that.

The dreams and his waking life had him ragged. Between classes, avoiding Gemma, and Cantrèa, balanced by dancing with Lily, alchemy with Lily, and working on the Elumnara with Lily, every hour seemed stuffed to bursting and there wasn’t much time for sleep.

“I thought you said she was smart. How have you worked with her almost every night for a week and not finished your homework? Unless you’re the stupid one.” She eyed Seb craftily.

“Sometimes we talk,” he said gruffly, pushing her away from his wardrobe. He had to meet Gemma for dinner in an hour. Fuck.

“What could you possibly have to talk about?”

He hadn’t told Tori about their side projects. She was still working on not making snide comments every time Lily came up, and he didn’t trust her not to say something they’d both regret.