The Awakening of Ren Crown (47 page)

One drop of paint for the possibility of bringing Christian back?

I held out the paper.

He looked at it, then back at me. “Will it to me, when our hands are both upon it.”

I did as he asked and felt magic zip through my fingertips and travel across the page to his. I let go as he pulled the paper to him. I ticked off a research task in my mind. Ownership transfer. That was why Marsgrove's paper had been reluctant to serve me.

But...Marsgrove's paper had served me. I unticked the mental box, modifying it to ask why I had been able to use the paper without an ownership transfer.

Constantine carefully put a pencil on top of the paper, watched it disappear, then retrieved it. He had obviously either seen Marsgrove's paper or one like it, as he knew exactly how to work it. And since I had modeled my design after it, they worked the same way. He looked decidedly gleeful—as gleeful as Lothario could look—before floating the bells over to me, his eyes barely leaving the paper. “A word of advice, Crown,” he said in his satiny voice. “If you make more of these, keep them hidden a little better.”

I elatedly checked over the troll bells, nodding absently to him. I went through all of the ingredients and objects I needed in my head. I had everything. I could definitely try this ritual tonight and push back my other Level Three ritual to tomorrow. The rituals were supposed to be spaced out more, but I could handle the aches, pains, and fractured bones that doing them one day apart got me.

I wished I could handle the consequences of doing more than one in a single day, but in addition to gross physical ailments, I lost track of time, passing out for long hours that would be far better spent with research and other smaller trials.

“You have no idea, do you?” The satin of his voice turned gruffer.

I looked up at him, then over to his shelves again, not following the thread of his conversation. The ceramic container that sat innocuously on his shelf was the same one I had seen him with the first day in Stevens's lab.

Constantine, as one of Stevens's primary students, was often in and out of her lab while I was there. I had the sure notion that he was trying to figure out what we were doing. But since we were always making art supplies, there wasn't much to uncover.

I should check into what he was keeping in that container. I had suspicions.

“No idea about what?” I asked.

The predatory look was back for a moment before he smoothed it out. “Keep your sketches like that out of sight.” He waved a hand, his ribbon following the motion. “I'm feeling decidedly helpful toward you. But I always collect on helpful advice given.” The edge of his mouth lifted.

Predatory.

“Well, I'll just have to disregard it then.” I smiled and turned.

The one foot satin ribbon was suddenly six feet long and wrapped around my left wrist, turning me back toward him. He said nothing, but his eyes were piercing, and the satin binding tightened.

Then, abruptly, the smooth ribbon trailed from my arm and shortened back into a twelve inch decoration hanging from his hand.

Nothing further was said. But I purchased a security folder to hide my box sketches in.

~*~

The Ritual of the Troll Bells turned out to be...complicated and painful.

Three hours after beginning it, I limped to Nephthys' room. Since I had started necromancy testing with abandon, I had fried my hair, caused it to fall out, turned it horrible colors, burned different parts of my body, and lost three fingernails.

“Sit right here.” She gracefully pointed to her dressing chair.

I perched delicately on the plush brown cushion. I had needed to attach the troll bells to every imaginable part of my body, and the resulting burn marks...fiercely burned.

She produced a bottle of sparkly gel and a stack of light gauze pads. “These will absorb the burns fully in time.”

She squeezed the gel onto a pad, then pressed it against my arm. The pad...absorbed...into my arm. The relief from part of the pain made me abruptly sag. The burn scar looked as if it had been healing for a week.

I closed my eyes. “I love magic. Thanks, Neph.” Being in Nephthy's presence was an automatic relaxant, in and of itself.

“Of course.”

She asked me about classes and projects as she applied the salved pads to the rest of my singed areas. If Neph didn't ask me soon about what I was doing to get this injured, I was going to start wondering about life back at the Sakkara Institute. She'd calmly produced a bottle of nail glue last time I'd come for a patch job. Glue that
made
nails instead of repairing them.

“What about you? How have practices been?” I looked at Neph. “Did you want to redo your choreography tonight? I can tweak the animation in any way you need.”

“You need to sleep, Ren,” she said soothingly. “The animation is lovely as is.”

I mentally squeezed in a block of time in my overly crammed schedule to do it tonight anyway.

There were too many things I needed to do and so little time. I crossed off the bell ritual from my mental list. It had produced a ghostly image of a shrieking bat. The shrieking had sounded a little like evil-Christian in pain, but a bat was not what I was looking for.

I touched the burn marks at my waist as she worked. Bells had been strung, like a loose belt, all the way around. It was just a good thing nothing had been attached to my neck. Even healing at seven times the normal rate, those marks would have been hard to hide.

“No, I feel great. Tonight, I insist. I can tell you have been working on different moves.” I looked around her room. There were well-worn paths of magic in the air that spoke of repeated practice.

“You are seeing magic better.” She tilted her head, then placed the next gel pad.

“Practice.” I grimaced. “Hideous practice.” With all of the defensive magic I was using in order to protect myself in some of the rituals, I was getting far better at identification. That, and now that we were back in the vault, Stevens was upping her expectations of my performance, so I had been working extra hard with Draeger in the Battle Building.

I had even unknowingly connected through the building to Alexander Dare's room during one practice session—my magic unconsciously connecting to his—and been squished to a pulp in under thirty seconds while we “sparred.” More like while he sparred and I had been tossed about. Lying spreadeagled on the ground afterward was the first time I had heard Draeger snicker.

“I'm coming back tonight and we are working on your choreography animation,” I told her, pointing my finger.

She smiled and finished applying the gel pads.

~*~

I was happy to see Isaiah in the Squad's break room that night. He motioned me over. “How is it going?”

I shrugged, then winced, the burned skin at my back pulling beneath the healing salve. “Well?”

“Good to hear. You missed the thousand shrieking bats that appeared in the middle of Top Circle earlier.” He shook his head. “Had to call in the combat mages to help. Strange things happening around campus. Things appearing and parts of the mountain being blocked as if chaos magic is running amok.”

“Blocked?”

He waved a hand. “Things that worked previously with magic, but now suddenly it is as if their magic or...or
space
...was sucked dry. Arches or spots turned non-magical or altogether ceasing to exist. Some geology mages said there were a few small magic zones inside the mountain that have been petrified recently.”

Huh. Strange things were always happening around campus. And magic often influenced magic. Therefore, maybe my ghost bat had simply been a reflection of whatever had happened on Top Circle. Annoying, but it meant that if I tried the ritual again, maybe I would get something else.

I pulled out my mental list and made the appropriate modifications cheerfully, removing the strike-through from the bell ritual. I made a note to procure burn cream in advance of my next experiment, though.

My third service call was a welcome distraction from thinking about the failed ritual.

“Will!” I exclaimed as he opened the door.

He looked surprised, then grinned. “I wondered what you had been sneaking off to do these past few nights. Welcome to the club.”

I beamed. And now I understood what Will had been talking about weeks ago with his shady club references. Justice magic made it so that punishments couldn't be discussed with others.

And I had figured out quickly that it was an unstated rule amongst the repeat offenders that club members chose their own punishments. One never knew when another miscreant was going to land service and be in charge of
you
.

I was beyond relieved that I could come clean about having community service with someone I knew. Leftover concerns about friends turning their backs on me had lingered. “Thanks.”

He motioned me in. “Come on, you can write the ticket in here. I just got off community service two weeks ago. They assigned me research to work off my offense hours.” He closed the door behind me. “Best punishment ever. I was given a tablet for two months to record my research. They cost a firstborn child to purchase otherwise, since they require origin magic.
And
I got to meet you and get an adventure.”

He walked over to his desk and poked a slim black device that looked to be mid-creation, and pushed it under his papers while winking at me. “Too bad the tablets are so difficult to duplicate that no one tries.”

Obviously, Will had used his time with his justice tablet well.

“I'll show you what I'm doing.” He motioned me over.

I walked forward, curious. I had never been in his room before, since we usually met in the main library. Unlike Constantine's luxe pad, Will's room space was much like mine.

Half of the room was filled with sports equipment and posters—Mike's side, obviously. The other half was filled with dangling devices and strange objects. A workbench, instead of a desk, lined Will's side of the room, with a loft bed overhead. The sword from the sketch was hanging horizontally on the wall above the bed. A mark on the floor was smoking.

“This the problem?”

“Yeah. Don't step on it.”

I scooted back. “What does it do?”

Will looked around furtively. I mimicked the action. I had thought we were alone. He pulled out a scanner and hit a button, then set it on the workbench. “New project.”

“It looks like you have quite the mad scientist setup here.”

“Thanks!” He looked at my tablet. “Do you mind activating the pause?”

I stared at him blankly.

“You tell the tablet that you are off the record.”

I looked down at my tablet, and did so.

Will glanced at his scanner, then relaxed. “That gives us five free minutes.”

“Oh. That’s nice to know. I am only on page six hundred and fifty of the manual.”

Will laughed. “Yeah, the user manuals are kind of dense. Most people don't bother getting to page thirty.”

“So what are you up to?”

“I'm working on portal pads.”

“Really?” I wanted to try one, but Marsgrove's restrictions on me would probably make me disappear into a black hole forever.

Will leaned forward and pushed his glasses up, clearly warming to the subject. “The best ones on the market only come with ten programmable destinations. I think I can increase that to fifteen. And my goal is to make them infinite. Your gophers inspired me.”

I thought of the trivets sucking the gophers inside, then popping them back out. “Er, if someone's magic goes crazy, couldn't someone get sucked in and never return?”

He waved a hand. “Sure.”

I imagined myself stuck inside the pad's rubber-looking threads...on Mars.

“I have the makings of a device to limit that though. It funnels only the correct amount of magic.”

My body automatically took me a step forward. I didn’t have enough money or nerve to order a magic controller from a catalog yet—and most of the catalog control devices had a distinct infomercial vibe—but I was beginning to grow desperate as more of my magic kept sneaking out and I kept having to redo my pyramid structure to control it. For some of the more hardcore rituals, I really needed something to funnel the
exact
amount of magic through the first time.

Will looked down at my feet and nervously motioned me to the side. “Until the spot stops smoking, stay at least twelve inches away.”

I decided to take a seat in a chair to the right—after checking it over thoroughly to make sure there weren't any disappearing elements on the surface. “So, this funnel device...does it work on everything magic-related?”

“It should.” He cocked his head. “Are you having control issues?”

“Er...” I suddenly felt like I was about to admit to incontinence. “Most of the time I get a grip on it, but when I want to be precise—” Like when I was working on anything Christian related “—I want to be
precise
.”

Will nodded. “I'm sure you'll work the problem out. Everyone eventually does. You want to try the device?”

His easy acceptance helped me relax immeasurably. “Most definitely.”

“Ok.” He fished around a drawer and pulled out a googly, tentacled thing. “It's a little...obvious right now. I haven't been concentrating on it. Hmmm...maybe I should do that.” He started fiddling with something. I recognized that look. It mirrored mine on many occasions.

“Yo, Will?”

He blinked up at me. “Yeah?”

“Er, how about I just try the funneler out as it is and see what happens? And you can concentrate on your portal technology.”

“But I can now think of ten ways to make the funneler better. Especially if I fit it to you. Do you like headbands?” He looked at my wrist. “No, a bracelet would be better. I could use separate threads in the leather band. And I could fit it around—”

“Will?”

“—the magic in your veins. The junction of the ulna and radius make a good channel to separate two magic streams and then bring them back together—”

Huh, that was interesting, and my mind started traveling down that path.

“
Grab the sword! Suck out his soul!”

Christian's crazy voice snapped me back, and I noticed the heat gathering in my tablet. “Will?”