The Awakening of Ren Crown (39 page)

A mist of light green slipped from my mental pyramid and wrapped into the air revealing colored lines and glittering points.

My shoulder touched a ward, and the field quivered. The vibrations bounced down my arm, making me shudder. The protection wards were so like Christian's electrical sparks during his Awakening.

I cleared my throat and concentrated on the book, trying to get my mind back on track. Fuchsia for protection and offense. That meant the pink line running around the perimeter of the room was likely a protection ward, since offensive magic would make no sense in an art room.

Forest green meant tranquility
or
trickery. It ran down the center of the ceiling. It was amazing how many things in magic seemed to have an equal and opposing side, depending on the intention of the caster.

There was a light hum in the room now. Not unpleasant, but strange.

I took a mental picture, then sketched out the ward design with regular colored pencils and a First Layer notepad—just in case magical art supplies under my control might trigger active magic. I ran down the list of the different colors again and what they could mean, making notes in the sketch margins. Another book I had in my reader was required for discerning intent. I would triangulate the two books with a third in a reading room directly after this. I needed to do a little poking at the pink ward, though, to see and feel what I was dealing with.

I didn't have the base knowledge to do much else yet. I would though. I'd figure all of it out. I'd figure
everything
out.

The hum became a buzz. I breathed deeply—calm, tranquility, control—then very carefully touched the pink perimeter line. It vibrated, then stilled. It gave me a strange set of impressions, but nothing firm. I would need to use a bit more magic to be sure.

I hesitated. But not being allowed to truly paint and do some real soul testing was making me angry and unhappy. Not having Christian back
now
was frustrating. I needed to know how to make wards that would let me paint and experiment.

Uncontrolled magic leaped out from under the edges of my cuff. Focus and intention, but without the requisite knowledge or confidence, streamed out in jagged lines. “No!” I tried to pull the magic back. But sensory input was streaming through my body at the contact. Overwhelming. Knowledge and intuition. A crystal shard flew off the table and shattered across the floor.

The pink thread of the ward snapped tight and expanded.

Boom
.

Something exploded outside the room.

“No, no, no.” A siren began blasting, and I automatically covered my ears in response. The action pulled the pink ward toward me.

Oh,
no
.

The pink ward wrapped around my finger, and the siren grew louder, shrieking painfully. I could hear people running toward the room from the jump point outside.
No, no, no
. In my panic I tried to shake the pink ward off. It snapped from my finger in the direction I pointed, and the door to the vault exploded. My hand whipped back, and I obliterated the easels behind me in a shower of wood, paper, paint, and wild magic.

I had to get out of here. My eyes went to my supplies and they flew into my bag. I put my arms out—flinging more pink offensive magic—and my bag zoomed onto my back, the straps fastening over my shoulders.

A tight net bore down on me, trying to squash my magic, an external magic force trying to bind and cut off mine. My panicking magic responded, inverting, and I could feel Marsgrove's shield working with whatever Mr. Verisetti had done to it, thrusting hard against the outside magic, repelling it forcefully.

I tried to pry the pink thread off my hand. I had to escape; I couldn't be found here, but the harder I tried to release it, the more tightly it clung, responding to my panic as it continued streaming more information to me.

And then they were upon me.

My shield tightened, green and black mixing with gold, blasting toward the mages who were spilling into the vault. My magic twined with my shield and pushed against the spells they were unleashing.

Magic was bouncing off me and ricocheting back at them just like it had with Mr. Verisetti. I watched a bolt bounce off of me and blow a ten foot hole through the western wall. I had seen Mr. Verisetti kill. And with Mr. Verisetti's spell mixing with Marsgrove's on me, I didn't think my magic was set to stun. Another bolt flew at me, the trajectory of it forming a diagram in my mind—it would hit the mage standing ten feet and thirty-two degrees in front of me.

Draeger's voice barked an instruction in my head, and I fell to the floor and sunk my hands into the tiles. The tiles disappeared, and I fell sharply through space until I hit dirt. I buried my hands in the earth, thrusting the energy downward, then something exploded within and around me, and I fell into darkness.

~*~

I woke to bright lights and Christian's voice in the back of my head babbling apologies, insanities, battle cries, and regrets.

“Ah, you are awake.”

That wasn't Christian's voice. I blinked a few times and the blurred vision of a man turned into one dressed in a crisp white shirt and pants. The men in white had finally come for me.

“You are in a spot of trouble, Miss Crown.” The stranger's voice was even and calm, nonthreatening.

I just hoped my padded room wouldn't feel like—

“Do you Jell-O the walls?” I asked, panicked.

The man, whose face was unexpectedly more rugged than his voice, looked at me sharply, then ran a scanner over me. A blue beam slid across my vision.

He muttered something about delusions and sent a tendril of magic into the scanner, then scanned me again.

A doctor? Or worse? Had Marsgrove captured me? Had the Department bogeymen? I tried to grab the scanner, but a clink and jerk made me realize I was handcuffed to the bed rails. Christian's mutterings grew louder, but I couldn't make out the words in my panic. “Listen, I just don't want the hard kind, ok?” I jerked at my restraints again. “I don't like Jell-O force-fields.”

Clink, jerk, panic, clink, jerk, panic.

“I don't like Jell-O skin. It's unnatural.”

“Settle down, Miss Crown. You’re going to hurt yourself, and I can't get a good reading.”

“I'm fine. No Jell-O needed, I swear.” Clink, jerk.

“What is the date?”

All that Libra Rising and Gemini Falling crap. “It's Ewok Day, for all I know.” Clink, jerk, clink, jerk.

There was the hint of a smile on his face. “In what dorm do you reside?”

It was getting harder to breathe and Christian had gone completely silent. Clink, jerk, clink, jerk. “Twenty-five, north point.”

“And what was the last class you attended?”

“Second Layer Engineering. Hermitage Building.” I really hoped he didn't ask me if I was registered for it.

“Good.” He sent another tendril of magic into the scanner. Then he tried to scan me again.

But I couldn't keep still.

“Listen, do you think you could unclip me?” Clink, jerk. I tried breathing through my nose. Clink, jerk. I wasn't sure I could pick the lock in my panic, but even if he gave me a rubber chicken, I'd try.

“Please be still, Miss Crown.” I was obviously making it hard for him to get a meter read. “It's procedure to keep students who have performed Level Five Offenses chained, until an enforcement official arrives. I'm sorry.”

I had no idea what a Level Five Offense was classified as. Poking at wards? I opened my mouth to ask, but then the sliver of Christian in me promptly shut it. Best to say as little as possible. “Ok?”

He looked at me for a long moment, then sighed. “Not again. Damn pencil pushers.” He looked at his tablet. “Your record is only three weeks old, and without an official start date. I'm not even going to ask how long you've really been here, who created your account in the cursed Administration office, or who your orientation guide was.”

He reached over and unclipped me, and I could have kissed him. I quickly brought my arms close to my body, hugging them to me.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

He waved a hand and I could see black tattooed lines dart out from the edges of his sleeves. Lines also peeked out from beneath his collar at the back of his neck. “Let me get a good reading, and we'll call it even. I'll try to get someone to help you with your account.”

Hopefully he would forget that part and just let me go. I held as still as possible and watched his teasing tattoos, which moved, darting forward then pulling back inside his cuffs.

His scanner beeped. “Your head seems fine. No Jell-O detected. But I take it you've had some rather unusual experiences with Wobble Walls in the past?”

I etched the words into my memory banks, unwilling to move my arms and access the bracelet encyclopedia. I would look it up later. I wondered if the translation enchantment rendered it to me as the too cutesy “Wobble Walls” and translated to something completely different for, say, Olivia. She probably heard “Transcendental Particle Freezer.”

“A mage once prevented me from running away, before he told me about magic.”

The doctor's lips thinned, and he shook his head. “The government programs need an overhaul. How about we fix you up completely, before someone comes?”

“Fix me completely?”

“You had your first recorded death. Congratulations.”

I blinked. I couldn't remember anything. Had I seen Christian when I'd been dead? I leaned forward, gripping the guardrails. “How long was I dead?”

“Thirty seconds. Would have been less, but you had some impressive shields up even after death. Medical personnel respond to Level Fives automatically.”

Thirty wasted seconds. I had nothing. That at least answered one question. I reluctantly struck temporary death from my mental list.

“Except for a broken toe, you are in shipshape condition. Easy enough to fix, if you want me to do it magically.”

I leaned forward, interested to know about magical medicine. “Yes, please. What do I do?”

“Well, I use you as the conduit to fix your bone. You open your magic to me, then I can proceed with the work.”

I hesitated. I wasn't sure I wanted to open my magic to anyone.

“It's really you healing your own bone, but with me driving the procedure. It isn't terribly invasive. Think of a whirlpool, and your malady is at the bottom of the vortex. I dive down, fix it, then we switch the polarity to bring me back up and out.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “I've never gotten lost, I promise.”

He had misunderstood my hesitation, but what he had said was useful to know. “Ok. So I just open my magic to you?” I could do that. I could.

“That's it.”

I opened too much, but the doctor seemed to anticipate it, and the feeling of gentle hands gathering in the plastic bag of my magic—before it blew wide in the wind—slid through me. He pulled the figurative bag into a point and aimed it toward my foot, then the tingle of his magic shivered against my own. It was a clinical feeling. A doctor's touch. And he was indeed diving down. I felt heat on the smallest digit of my right foot, then as if someone flipped a switch, the magic swirl reversed.

The doctor raised a brow and smiled at me. “I recommend a few extracurricular meditation courses.”

“Yeah, I haven't been too successful with that.” There was always too much else that needed to be done with those minutes or hours.

He shook his head.

“Sorry?” I was oddly sad that he was disappointed in me.

He sighed. “No, it's not you. Damn bureaucrats. They are supposed to make sure you get the right training before—”

Peters chose that moment to burst into the room.

No
. Why him? He was looking down at his chunky, bright, sunshine yellow tablet. All of the enforcement students carried one, and all the colors were different. That Peters had that color never ceased to amuse me usually.

“Doctor Greyskull?”

Upon hearing his name, my doctor suddenly grew even more awesome.

“I'm almost finished with my examination of Miss Crown, Mr. Peters,” Greyskull said.

Peters's head jerked up at the mention of my name, and he glared at me, as if I were the lowest level of criminal filth he had ever seen. “Did you sedate her, Doctor Greyskull?”

“I highly doubt that is necessary, Mr. Peters.” There was disapproval in Greyskull's voice.

“She burned down the entire Shangwei Art Complex!”

I winced. Oops.

“And this is her first offense, is it not?”

“It is decidedly not! She has perpetrated a slew of petty crimes. I first observed her breaking regulations in the library! She attacked Mr. Dare!”

Both of Greyskull's eyebrows rose at the last statement. “And she had no idea what she was doing, most likely. I'll bet if you look through her records, you'll find that she is a transfer student they pushed past some of the orientation classes.” Greyskull sent me a significant look.

I withheld the urge to salute him.

“Which is neither your fault, nor Miss Crown's,” Greyskull said in a neutral tone.

Peters's pursed his lips together. “I am sure procedures were followed.”

“Mmmhmm.” Greyskull prodded and poked me a few more times, looking in my eyes and examining a finger.

I had the feeling he was just killing time to irritate Peters. I think I was in love.

“See me immediately, if you experience any pain, Miss Crown.”

“I will.” I stretched my limbs, hoping I wasn't about to be handcuffed again. I sent a surreptitious glance around looking for anything small enough to palm that might be useful as a pick. “Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate everything you’ve done.” I tried to signify that I appreciated more than just the scan and toe fix.

He tilted his head and his eyes crinkled. “Of course.”

He turned to Peters. “Good to see you, Mr. Peters. I imagine you are still following procedures to the letter. Good man.” Then he gave me another small smile, turned, and stepped from the room.

Peters looked disapprovingly at the open cuffs, but didn't try to reattach them. I put “practice picking cuffs” on my lengthy to-do list, if I made it out of here.

Peters rifled through my bag, which was on the floor. I was relieved my supplies had made it, but watching Peters look through my things made my teeth clench.