Magic University Book One: The Siren and the Sword (3 page)

“That’s Randall’s way of saying don’t get drunk if you have a bottle of hair bleach,” Alex said with a sly shrug. “It
seemed
like a good idea at the time...”

“You could dye it back, you know,” Jess pointed out.

Randall answered with a shrug of his own. “Why pretend it didn’t happen? It will grow out, anyway. We’re here to learn, right? Let’s call it a learning experience and move on.”

Kyle couldn’t quite place Randall’s accent. Something Caribbean, he guessed, but he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like Rastafarian, and he didn’t really have much experience with people from that part of the world.

They ate for a while after that, the various suitemates catching up with each other, but eventually the topic came back around to Kyle and the bell.

“So, wait,“ Lindy said. “You had no idea at all? Just walked in?”

“And got trampled by Dean Bell,” Jess added. “Fortunately Madeleine was there to rescue him.”

“Mwahaha,” Alex laughed maniacally. “And a good thing, too, or Master Bell might have made a snack out of you.”

Kyle laughed too, but blinking in confusion, still not sure where the jokes ended and real things started.

“Pffft. Dean Bell’s bark is worse than his bite,” Jeanie said, prompting more laughs from the others.

“So what house is he going to be in?” Randall asked.

“Ours, obviously,” Alex said, now drinking from an open can of cola, his bare feet up on his chair.

“Well, temporarily,” Jess said. “I told Madeleine he could crash here until she figures out where he’s going. She said he would have to pull cards later.”

“Cards?” Kyle said, feeling like most of what he’d said in the past hour had been one-word questions.

“Cards! There’s an idea.” Alex climbed out of his chair, going directly over the arm toward the door to his room, and then coming back with a pack of cards. “Has anyone ever done a Tarot reading for you?”

“An old lady read my palm once, on the boardwalk in Santa Cruz...”

Alex waved him quiet. “No, no. I mean with Tarot cards.”

Jess moved the pizza boxes aside and Alex spread his deck out on the low table, face up. Kyle peered at the pictures, which were more colorful and varied than typical playing cards, and yet still resembled them somewhat. Alex gathered them back up and shuffled the deck.

The others all watched, a sense of anticipation filling the room. “This isn’t going to hurt or anything, is it?” Kyle asked.

“The truth always hurts,” Jeanie quipped, and they all laughed, but it wasn’t a cruel laugh.

Alex held out the deck. “Cut the cards, then pull one out.”

“Okay.” Kyle took the pack, cut it in the middle and set it down on the table, pulling the top card and looking at it. “Am I supposed to show it to you?”

Alex grinned. “Yes, you’re supposed to show it to me. What do you think this is, a magic trick? Oh, duh.” More laughter. “Go on.”

Kyle slapped it down on the table like a blackjack dealer and Jess and Lindy gasped.

“The Ace of Swords,” Alex said solemnly. Kyle waited for him to break into a grin, but his face remained serious.

Kyle finally turned to Jess. “What’s that mean?”

Lindy made a scornful noise. “It doesn’t mean anything. Alex isn’t a soothsayer and probably neither are you. But the swords are the suit of Gladius House. Here in Camella, we’re the cups. The Ace
does
usually refer to someone on the start of a journey...”

Jeanie snorted. “No wonder you only got a B on that exam. The Ace of Swords, without any other context, usually means The Hero. Think Prince Charming with his sword drawn, going off to slay a dragon.”

Randall made a skeptical noise. “It can also signify the beginning of a great intellectual journey, though. The blade is Occam’s Razor, and the light you see shining in the card is the light of reason.”

Alex rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Draw two more cards, Kyle. Let’s have one that’s past and one that’s future.”

Kyle nodded, but hesitated with his hand over the deck. “Should I cut again? Or shuffle again?”

“You should do whatever you feel is right,” Jess said seriously.

Her dark, dark eyes seemed to be telling him everything would be all right if he just went with the flow. Kyle let out a breath. “Okay.”

He turned up two more cards. An appreciative murmur went around the table. “Your past, three of pentacles. Your future, three of cups.”

“Cups, that’s you guys, right?” The card showed three young women, dancing and drinking, looking very happy and festive.

Alex grinned. “Could be. The three of cups tends to mean good luck. Everything’s going to work out. There’ll be abundance and plenty.”

“Three is the magic number?” Kyle tried.

Alex nodded. “You catch on quick. The three of coins here means hard work. You worked hard to get here.”

Randall pointed to the cards. “It’s usually meant as a pinnacle of craft, though. Given that you don’t know anything
at all about magic, yes, I guess Alex is right. You worked hard to get to Harvard, I guess.”

Alex tapped the deck of cards. “And now for a prediction on what will happen to you...tonight.” Kyle could practically hear a drum roll in the background. Alex tapped the deck again. “Go on, pull one more, Kyle.”

Kyle put his hand on the top card, then turned it over slowly. The card showed two people, naked, in a close embrace. A very close embrace.

“The Lovers,” Alex said, solemn again, then gave a sly look to Jess. “Perhaps you won’t be sleeping on the couch after all...?”

Jess was blushing a deep red, but wasn’t making any protestations. Kyle’s eyes were probably as big as saucers. “Um, I, Jess...”

Jeanie got to her feet and made a disgusted sound. “Really, Alex, sleight of hand? Why don’t you show him the other card you have up your sleeve?”

Kyle looked back and forth between them. “That was a trick?”

Jeanie wrinkled her nose. “He’s also got the Three of Swords. Go on, show him.”

Alex sheepishly pulled the card from his sleeve, handing it to Kyle. It showed a red heart, pierced through by three swords. “It means heartbreak, obviously,” Alex said.

Jess got to her feet. “Come on, Kyle. Let me show you the library and some of the other campus buildings. We’ll leave the card tricks to the jokers.”

Kyle followed her, wondering what exactly had just happened.

* * * *

Jess was the perfect hostess for the next few hours: polite, friendly, but a little distant as she took him around the campus, showing him some facilities shared between the magical students and the normal ones, like the bookstore and the swimming pool; and the ones for magical students only, like Mormallor Hall, where the Alchemy labs were, and the Sassamon Ritual Arts building, which housed many magical artifacts, museum-style, and had a large underground chamber that reminded Kyle of a cathedral, except it was perfectly round and the colorful stained glass ‘windows’ were illuminated from behind by some light source that was not the sun.

As they made the rounds, Kyle learned a little more about Jess herself. She was a sophomore, and she hadn’t declared her major yet, but she was thinking about Healing Arts, even though most people thought Esoteric Arts was more her style. He gathered that there were various departments, just like in a normal university, including Alchemy,
Soothsaying, and Ritual Arts.

She also filled him in on the need for secrecy, and the history of Veritas, which went “underground” in 1692 because of the Salem Witch Trials. Technically, to the “real world,” they were Harvard students, and if Kyle went on to a normal life as something like a banker or whatever, he’d be considered a Harvard alumnus. “But who would become a banker or something boring if they could do something magical?” Kyle had asked, which had made her laugh and admit that not many did.

They were having a look through the Elwyn Library collection of magical texts when Kyle lost her for a few moments. The labyrinthine shelves were packed with fascinating books with names like
Battle of Wills: When the Geas Becomes a Curse
and
Man is a Flightless Bird: Keys to Levitation
. At one point he turned to whisper to her, and found she was not behind him as he’d thought.

“Jess?”

He had the feeling someone was watching him, though. Was she playing hide and seek? He went further down the row, where the lights were not on. Each shelf had a timer switch at the end so that an absent-minded scholar could not leave the lights on in a given section of the stacks, nor could one pore over the books too long before being reminded to keep moving. Kyle did not bother to go back to the end of the shelf to turn the switch, instead pressing deeper into the shadows. “Jess?” he whispered again.

“—es,” he thought he heard an answering whisper. Yes? Did she say yes?

He felt a hand brush over the back of his bare neck and goose bumps rose. He froze, then felt a soft finger trace the shape of his ear. “Jess?” he said a little louder.

The lights came on suddenly and there she was at the end of the row, her hands on her hips. “There you are. Didn’t I tell you how these lights worked?”

“Oh, um, yeah.” Kyle looked around him but there was no sign of whoever had been teasing him. It had to be her, but she had gotten to the end really quickly. He thought about how deeply she had blushed when Alex had slipped The Lovers onto the pile. He hurried to meet her. “Sorry about that. Um, hey, so...your friends are great and everything, but...but what do you say to having dinner together? I mean, just you and me.”

Jess’s black eyes seemed to deepen under the fluorescent lights as she looked up at him. “Are you sure?”

Kyle blinked. “Why wouldn’t I be? Jess, you’re a...a great girl. I really like you. It...it doesn’t have to mean more than just dinner if you don’t want it to.”

She motioned him to follow her and as they were going down the stone stairs of the library, she answered. “I’d like
that.”

“For it to be just dinner?”

“For us to have dinner together. Without any expectations, I mean. It might be just dinner...it might not.” Her face was angled toward the sunset, hidden by the buildings, the sky between the dark shapes of the trees in the courtyard turning purple.

“That’s what I mean,” Kyle said. “You know, a date, but the find-out-whether-there-will-be-a-second-date kind of date, rather than the already-committed-to-giving-a-relationship-a-try kind of date.”

That made her laugh. “Okay. I can go along with that.”

“Good. Just, um, not too expensive a place. I’m kind of on a budget...” He grinned at her sheepishly.

“All right.” She linked her arm with his. “I really don’t care where we go. In fact, let’s go somewhere we don’t have to put on nicer clothes. You like Mexican?”

“Mexican is good. Or what about Spanish? I walked past a Spanish place on the way to campus this morning?”

She made a face, then looked at him curiously. “I’m really picky about Spanish food,” she said.

“Oh, is that place no good?”

She stopped walking and faced him. “You really don’t know anything about the magical world, do you?”

He shook his head, wondering what Earth-shattering thing she was about to tell him. “Is it a
faux pas
to eat Spanish food because of...of the Inquisition or something?”

She burst out laughing. “No, no.” Her face was alight with mirth and he wondered what else he could say to make her laugh like that. Only, intentionally. “You don’t know much about the Inquisition, either, I’m guessing.”

“Um, beyond that it happened and that Monty Python made fun of it, not really,” he admitted. “I’m supposed to be taking European history this year—except it looks like I’m not going to, since I’ll be here.”

She smiled. “You’re cute. Okay, sure. Let’s have Spanish food. I’ll order. Come on.”

She took him by the hand, which for some reason made Kyle’s heart do happy flips in his chest, and led him toward the nearest gate into Harvard Square.

* * * *

Jess apparently did know a lot about Spanish food. Not only that, but she spoke Spanish, which led to Kyle wondering if Torralva was a Spanish name, which led to Jess finally telling him it was a very old magical family name.

“He was basically one of the most famous enchanters in Spain in the early 1500s,” she said. “He was the healer to Charles V, and reputed among his enemies to be a necromancer, while his supporters thought he talked to angels. The Inquisitors tried him for sorcery, imprisoned and tortured him for three years, and eventually they let him go to Rome...” She shrugged. “There are as many myths about him as there are truths. Let’s just say that it would be a bit like you saying you were descended directly from Merlin.”

Kyle was pushing his spoon through a kind of runny vanilla custard by then, trying to decide if it would be rude to lick the dish. “Are there descendants of Merlin?”

Jess shrugged. “If there are, they aren’t saying so, anyway. England’s had a really fucked-up history in terms of magical suppression, too, and they had some kind of internal civil war in the 1990s that came and went so fast that the other countries never even got to pick sides, from what I understand. But...yeah. People get all in a twist about my ancestry. It’s a pain.”