The Awakening of Ren Crown (34 page)

Pertinent information from the books went into my notebook as straight text, while my interpretations consisted of a mishmash of text and pictorial representations which were easier for my brain to decipher quickly.

On the way down the stairs, I saw the girl who had helped me previously—Nephthys—ghosting through the second floor aisles and speaking softly to people she passed. The mages nodded, but otherwise ignored her. She disappeared before I could speak to her again.

~*~

Will and I had discovered the “art vault” was on the south side of the third circle, attached to one of the busier art studios and lecture halls. I woke early, scouted the location, then settled into a small benched courtyard nearby to look at every “material and compounds” text available on the server, just in case Professor Stevens was the taskmaster she presented.

No one entered the vault while I was cramming. At ten to the hour, I moved my position so that I was sitting next to the humongous steel door leading into the mountainside. I scrambled to my feet as Professor Stevens approached, her heels clicking steadily over the cobblestone path without a single stumble.

She barely looked at me as she pressed her hand against the door at ten sharp. Blue energy zipped along the surface of the steel, and the two foot thick door slid inside a pocket. Stevens stepped over the threshold, but I hesitated. The door started to close, and I quickly darted inside. In for a penny, in for a pound, at this point.

The single room of the vault was only about five hundred square feet in area. Stations and equipment were set up along the sides with an island in the middle. There was no discernible source of light—no windows, no candles, no bulbs—and yet it was fully lit. Furthermore, there were no shadows. I didn't even cast one as I moved, which was a little freaky.

Stevens moved toward a station. “Your minutes start now. Crafting requires power, creativity, and control. Anyone can make a charcoal pencil.” Professor Stevens cut her hand through the air. “Any mage can shove magic at an object. True craft comes from the ingredients you use to create the medium, what magic you put in, and the process you undertake.”

I hurried over to watch her, thinking of the words Mr. Verisetti had used when I'd been mixing paint. I nodded to her even though she wasn't looking at me for a response.

“You put magic in the instrument, then you extract the magic later—forming a direct conduit for your intentions. Injection and extraction can be done in a thousand different ways. But the connection between your internal magic and the object magic is what will bring success. I despise adequacy. Anyone can be adequate.”

Glass boards, material supplies, and oddly shaped tools flew from around the room and gathered on the island counter between us in a flurry of magic. She stabbed a sharp, manicured nail into the steel of the counter. “Make paint.”

My heart picked up speed.

I opened my mouth to ask for direction, but at the last second clamped it shut. No, that was not the way to proceed here. Christian had always won over people with charm and interpersonal skill, even when he barreled past their preferred boundaries. I only had simple honesty and observational skills. “Thank you for giving me this opportunity, Professor Stevens.”

Her expression was still cold, but she tilted her head and gave a short nod.

I took a deep breath and dipped a fingertip into the linseed, then touched a lilac pigment with my fingertip, waiting expectantly for the campus police to arrive. But no one knocked on the vault door. I pulled the almost-paint along a piece of waxed paper at the side. Still no knock. Excitement gathered under my sternum and surged upward. I could paint here.
I could paint here
.

“What are you doing?” she snapped.

I moved a glass board closer to me, trying to hide my fierce smile as I tucked my chin to my chest. “Getting a feel for the materials, Professor.”

I started mixing, and quickly realized that silence and concentration earned points with her. She started to give me sharp tips and pointers as I worked. I soaked them all in, trying to absorb everything while injecting that desire into the materials I was mixing.

After another quick test of my ability to freely touch paint—real, mixed paint—the twin urges to crow and panic gripped me simultaneously. Go time.

“Can students rent time here, Professor Stevens?”

“No.”

“What about the time when the space isn't in use?” No one had entered all morning.

“Inconsequential. Only mages with clearance can open this space. And if a cleared mage is not present, anyone attempting to perform active magic would be very sorry.”

I took my hands away from the mixture and touched Will's bracelet, scrolling through the active and passive magic topics until I found what I was looking for. Studying wards was considered passive magic.

That meant, if I could study the vault magics, I could recreate them somewhere else. My first library search had yielded the knowledge that preventive spells could be obscured under a chaos field. I took a deep breath.

“Is the vault made of chaos magic, Professor?”

She had been examining my completed mixtures, but now looked sharply at me. “Yes. Are you finished with that mixture then?”

I hurriedly picked up my tools, trying to keep my mind on the task while I also mentally starred the engineering class I had previously added to my uncategorized mental paint bucket. I created a new bucket—a nice turquoise—and populated it with Professor Mbozi's Engineering 101.

“These are all adequate as base materials, Miss Crown, but I thought you wanted to make
extraordinary
paint.” Her voice touched the edge of derisive as she examined me.

“Yes.”

She stared at me hard. “Then do each step as if it is the one that matters most.”

I nodded and started again. It was a good thing I had crammed before entering. Magic materials worked differently. I took a deep breath and thought of magic filtering through the paint, making it flow in my mind.

Mixing pigments, binders, fillers, and solvents wasn't hard. Mixing them while adding magic at each step was. Making each step a magic-filled process.

Pigment dust poofed everywhere. Linseed oil sprayed every surface. Flour, milk, chalk, and clay mixed together, making the whole place look like some mad bakery. And I was going to need to look into an anti-turpentine hair cleanse.

It was nothing like mixing for Mr. Verisetti. But then, there had been those toffees...and the heavy, zoned atmosphere...and my suppressed awakening magic...and, hilariously enough, emotional support. Also, I was quite sure he had magicked each mix after he'd collected them from me. Added the “extra shine.”

I was adding magic in each step. But unfortunately I blew the magical brains out of each substance every time.

“You have to put just the right amount of magic in or you will fail every time.” Stevens didn’t yell, but there was a very disdainful, sharp edge to her words. “Twenty milliliters into the ochre pigment.”

“How—”

“Twenty milliliters. Now.”

I thought hard about what twenty milliliters looked like in a beaker, shot that vision at the mixture in front of me, and promptly blew the whole thing skyward, splattering it over the ceiling like some alien goo that had dripped through the tiles.

Stevens, I learned quickly, was fabulous at shields, and my shield didn't give a hoot about messes. So, whereas I was covered in drippings along with the once pristine floor, she just stood there, completely untouched, tapping her stiletto-clad foot.

I had always prided myself on being competent. But when I needed to measure twenty milliliters of a substance, there were tools that could be used, like “spoons” and “beakers” and “scales” and the oh so obvious “measuring cup.”

“Is there a measuring device for magic?”

“Yes,” she said icily. “There are many. But they are for those who seek no skill at the craft.”

Maybe that was my problem. I had always thought of chemistry as a science, not a craft. Or maybe my problem was that this wasn't chemistry.

“Twenty milliliters.”

“Can—”

“Now.”

I shot my magic out and was dripping dark yellow sludge two seconds later.

“Again. The calcite this time.”

Frustration created a discordant harmony between stiletto heels tapping and my ears buzzing.

Twenty milliliters, eh? I'd create twenty milliliters of—

Boom
.

I blew a hole through a giant kiln and a table, white powder puffing the air.

I stared, horrified—she was going to kill me—and quickly reached out and pushed all of my focus into making the objects whole, just like Draeger did in our pseudo room.
Knit, knit, knit
.

The kiln snapped back together, as did the table.

I didn't risk a look at her, I just concentrated that same focused energy—rotating a picture of a beaker filled with twenty milliliters around in my mind. I shot the
image
of the measurement at the umber pile and felt my magic crisply respond and follow.

The brown flakes sparkled briefly, then the odd light rested. The pile of pigment was now
vital
.

I backed away, afraid my heaving breaths would scatter my hard work. I chanced a look at Stevens, who was watching me.

Her eyes were unreadable. “Adequate,” she said, then looked down at the materials. “Which pigment speaks to you the most?”

My eyes slid to the pile of beautiful blue. “The lapis-lazuli,” I reluctantly said.

“Why?” She surveyed me.

“Crushed lapis-lazuli makes ultramarine pigment.” My voice lost volume at the end of the sentence. I cleared my throat. “The old masters used it for portrayals of power and importance, literal and figurative.”

“Do you crave power?”

I started to answer in the negative, but stopped myself. “I suppose, a bit, yes. I crave knowledge. I crave the ability to put forth every vision I create. But leading people, no. Not that kind of power.”

“What do you see when you focus your magic?”

“Paint flowing. A beaker appropriately leveled with magic.”

“Do it again.”

Keeping track of the feeling of how my magic had crisply responded and modifying the image depth according to her instructions, I was able to inject the right amount into each subsequent pile. Mostly. I made a mental note to buy a set of measuring tools so I could memorize the image of each level.

The more I exercised those images, the easier they would attach to my magic. I could feel it. And used with my paint drop image, I might be able to make a real go of this magic control thing.

I wiped at the dried and drying pigments painting me. I feared what was going to happen when I stepped out of this room. Thirty campus police officers might be standing on the other side.

I rubbed my painted hand. “Professor, why did you care about my shields?” They hadn't much saved me here.

She looked at me as if I'd said something inordinately stupid. “You should have been able to throw off my probes yesterday, with that kind of shielding.” She motioned sharply to my head. “Yet you let them sit, useless. What use is having a physical shield at all, if you let it dangle from your fingers, useless?”

I needed to power them constantly? I made a note to look it up. “Can everyone see the shield—shields?”

“No.” The skin at the sides of her eyes tightened, as if she hadn't meant to say that. “You can't even see them,” she said condescendingly.

I looked down at my hands. They were covered in streaks of umber, sienna, ochre, cobalt, and white. I tried to separate the colors from my hand. A thin, very thin, hue of gold outlined my hand for a moment, before disappearing from sight again.

A bolt of something shot toward me and I reacted, calling and shooting twenty milliliters of magic into the gold layer over my hand, lifting it in front of me.

The bolt bounced off. I blinked and watched Stevens easily wave away the reverberated magic.

She crossed her arms and sighed. “You have the stupid combination of attributes I seem destined to attract. Intuitive, determined, chaotic, and reckless. But denying talent is stupid, which I'm not. Meet me here at the same time tomorrow.”

She waved her hand and the pigments, binders, fillers, and solvents encasing me whooshed into the grate in the floor.

I blinked at her, shocked at both my squeaky clean state and that she was allowing me another session. “Tomorrow is Saturday.”

She gave me a hard stare.

“Thank you,” I said quickly, still in shock. “I'll be here tomorrow.”

She opened the door and motioned me out. The sun was directly overhead, which meant I had extended my time with her by at least an hour and a half.

I turned to her. “I'm sorry, I—”

“Tomorrow.” She strode away.

No officers were waiting for me. I had just made paint. Stevens was going to teach me. I had just
touched
paint. I had passed her tests. I had just found a place I could
paint
.

Maybe...

I dug out my supplies and drew a quick sketch, then bypassing the lavender tube, I pressed a fingertip of store-bought paint to the page. An officer appeared two minutes later, tablet out, shaking his head at me. Another firesnake skin was added to my tally. I now had to collect nine.

But amazingly I hadn't been penalized for my actions inside the vault. The officer could have added a hundred skins and I'd still be flying high.

Nothing was going to stop me now.

Chapter Seventeen: Thieves, Pyramids, and Firesnakes