The Rise of Ren Crown (15 page)

I blinked at him, but he touched his starched Oxford-like collar—which like many things in the Second Layer, was
close
to its equivalent in the First Layer, but with subtle differences. Magic reached up from the chair and wrapped around me, giving me a moment to think
I knew it
, before the magic retreated, leaving me unpinned and unharmed.

He tilted his head in the way that people here did when they were getting information mentally. “Ren Crown. Dorm Twenty-five. Room Twenty-five. Roommate Olivia Price, listed as missing.”

I nodded jerkily.

“Your magic reserves are listed in the black, though you've recently edged into purple.” He grimaced. “You could enroll down in Medical. Get a fortnight recovery stay.”

I shook my head. They would keep me for the entire two weeks, probably in the healing coma Greyskull had recommended. Way too long to save Olivia. And they might start letting anyone poke at me while I was unconscious. It was best to remain in the general population, even if that meant other horrors were in store.

I couldn't trust anyone in the Administration, which was slowly being eaten by the Department, and that included Medical.

“Is your preference to stay in your room and have someone added, or to move to a different room where someone already lives?” the boy asked.

“Neither,” I whispered.

His expression wasn't without sympathy. “This is not a punishment. I know it doesn't seem that way, but this is for the health and safety of the students and campus. We can't play with the magic dynamics too much without risk, do you understand?”

I nodded, understanding mentally, while at the same time not understanding
emotionally
at all.

“Which do you prefer?”

Being in my own space was preferable. But did I want some stranger invading our space, sleeping in Olivia's bed, using her things? I put my hand against my lips, swallowing down the bile.

“I'd like to stay in my room alone,” I said, fingers pulling over my chin. “But if I have to have someone with me, I'd rather go somewhere else.”

He looked relieved. Relieved to have me out of his dorm, probably.

“Put your hand on this.”

I carefully reached forward to touch the crystal ball in front of him. It looked so benign, just as it had when I'd touched it earlier. The milky white haze swirled and pictures rapidly blinked through the space, like a deck of cards being professionally shuffled. I thought I caught sight of a few familiar faces, but it was hard to tell in the rapid flip.

Princeton looked into the depths and the skin around his eyes pulled tight, moving the shape-changing ring in his brow, like the ring in his lip.

With a wave of his hand, the crystal reset, stagnant once more. He tapped something out on his wrist, and I saw magic scroll through the swirling tattoos on his skin.

“Dorm One. Room Sixty-two.”

Dorm One? That was where Dare and Constantine lived. That was their floor. That was...

“No,” I whispered.

The world tilted. Literally. Warm, soft hands pushed beneath my armpits, pushing me back upright, and soft words murmured in my ear.

“She has enough base power to support you.” Princeton's words sounded far away. “And she filled out a very specific form and opened herself to a new magic source that is highly compatible to yours, which makes her the best singly available mage on campus.”

Princeton looked at Neph critically, but didn't tell her to move away from me as he continued speaking. “Without stuffing you in with a twosome, Bellacia Bailey is the best qualified applicant right now.”

“I'm not doing it.”

There was a bit of pity in his expression. “You have to, kid. It's already logged.”

“No.”

“You should have seen the
other
option that came up in the ball.” He shook his head. “Come on, kid, it won't be so bad.”

It could not be
worse
.

“What were the other options?” I asked desperately.

He shook his head. “Doesn't matter. Bailey is now logged, and it will be a good match—she procured exactly the right source of magic to help you. With your magic as it is, the recommendation is for fourteen hours spent in her room. Report immediately,” he said, looking at my magic. “For your own health and safety.”

He must have seen something pretty devastating on my face, because his expression softened slightly and he swirled a hand over the crystal, gazing inside. He moved nimble fingers over the cloudy swirls. “I can give you...approval for twelve hours. Okay? Room Twenty-five here has a bonus layer of magic from whenever Price was without a roommate. It allows it to tap into campus. Not great, but not debilitating either. I can hook it into your mix in the Dorm One room to give that tiny bit of flexibility.”

I swallowed, insanely feeling like I was going to cry. “Couldn't I just stay in twenty-five, then?”

“No. Twelve hours spent in a room with an assigned compatible mage gives the
base
benefit in an emergency situation.”

Twelve hours with Bellacia? Even split into parts, that was horrifying.

“Listen, kid. It's best for you to have stabilizing influences around you at all times. And that muse of yours is going to be on thin ice for the foreseeable future.” He looked at Neph.

What?
I opened my mouth to ask what he was talking about, but he waved a hand to forestall me.

“Crown. Stop. Even the dorm had trouble not assigning you to Medical.” He waved at the walls around us. “Probably why it offered that strange other choice,” he muttered.

He shook his head. “You need this. Your magic is twisted and tangled, like barbed wire on a magical fence. You shouldn't even be upright.” He examined me clinically, like a scientist who had found a strange, new animal. “I've never seen someone with magic twisted like that who wasn't screaming.”

I stared back.

His gaze slid away first. “Listen, kid. This is temporary. Just get better and worry about other things later. But if Price doesn't show in a week, your temporary assignment will be permanent.”

“No.”

He heaved a sigh. “Don't kill us all, okay?” His ouroboros ring started moving again.

“Yes?”

He closed his eyes and adjusted the crystal ball. “Don't make it a question, Crown.”

“Right. Yes.”

I pushed away from the table. I
would
get Olivia back before the week was up. Until then...Bellacia Bailey was going to get her feral roommate.

Chapter Ten: Bellacia Bailey

I knocked softly on the door, sounding the death knell of my dorm life. A door opened further down the hall and I turned to see Dare looking out at me, eyes narrowed on the duffel bag around my shoulder.

The door in front of me opened and I hastily turned.

Bellacia smirked at me, hand lightly on the frame. But it was an odd smirk. Tension and unease were layered beneath it.

She pushed away from the frame and allowed me to walk inside.

“Daddy thinks I'm crazy to room with one of
you
, even for a sennight,” she said as she closed the door with a click of finality. “But I told him that it would be worth the fear. And Daddy knows risk is worth it when it is as fantastic an
opportunity
as this one is.”

“I passed the test,” I said woodenly, not wanting to think of my own parents.

“Of
course
you did.”

I took a quick glance around. It was like Alexander and Constantine's suite. There was a main living space, a bedroom, and two workrooms. I had never been in their bedroom, so I walked in that direction. A bathroom was off to the side.

The bedroom was far smaller than Olivia's and mine—just two beds, nightstands, and closets—which made sense considering the added space in the rest of the suite.

Seeing the empty bed against the window wall, I walked over and plunked my things on it. The view out the window was all wrong, looking up the mountain instead of down, and on the sixth floor instead of the second.

“And if you think I want to room with one of
you
,” I said, looking at the firesnake grove in the distance, a level up. “You can tell
Daddy
that you
are
crazy.”

I turned in time to see her eyes flash. Her Sirenic abilities were just as freaky to me as my Origin ones were to everyone else.

Her expression smoothed out just as quickly as it always did and she laughed. “This will be so much
fun
.”

“Yup,” I said woodenly. “A real joy.”

She smiled and sat cross legged on her bed, entirely too close. “Get cozy. We're
roommates
now.”

“
Temporary
roommates.”

She waved her hand. “Let's get better acquainted. Why don't we start by having you tell me exactly what happened on campus today.”

“You were there.”

“Should I go first then?”

I plopped hard on the bed and whacked the back of my head against the window. I started a six-hour timer ticking in my head and concentrated on setting out the few things that I always kept near my bed.

“You will explain everything to me by the end of the night,” she said, voice lilting.

“I actually will not.”

“Tell me, Ren. What did you do today?”

I could feel her voice wrap around me. And as it did, my pocket warmed.

I removed the warm, sand-colored scarab stone, and held it up. The waves of sound produced by the enchantment of her voice moved around the scarab as I moved it in the air. The scarab was blocking the waves from attaching to me.

I looked over to see her poleaxed expression. “Try again, Bella.”

Fury overtook her expression. Had she really thought that this was going to be that easy?

“Where did you get that? They never... From your little
muse
? How is that working out for you?”

“Very well, thanks.” Oddly, I was calming in the face of her rage. Muses weren't allowed in Bellacia's room—and I
would
be doing something about that once I knew how to keep Neph safe from her—but Neph had tucked this into my hand on the way over and told me never to remove it.

“You
owe
me,” Bellacia said, voice harsh. “You owe campus.”

“I owe one person, and she's not you,” I said pointedly, tucking the stone beetle back in my pocket.

“Your
last
roommate? Price? They've listed her as missing, not dead. Where do you think she is? Such an interesting tidbit for our readers,” she said bitingly.

“Go to hell.” I shifted and laid the back of my head against the foreign pillow and closed my eyes.

“I don't think so,” she said melodically, poisonously. “You
owe me
.”

“Thanks for the save today,” I said, eyes still closed. “Surprised the hell out of me. There. All done.”

She laughed, a tinkling thing. “I don't think so.”

“No? Then you can
kiss my ass
and thank me for saving you from suffocating to death, along with all of your Magicist friends.”

“Such language. Are all those born to the First Layer so linguistically challenged?”

“Most. Normal people are good that way.” I kept my eyes closed.

We sat in silence for a good minute. It probably wasn't wise to let someone like Bellacia regroup, but I was exhausted.

She hopped off her bed, landing on cat feet, but in the silence it was like planting a steel post in the ground.

I cracked an eye, on alert. Olivia had shown that roommates could do ill things to each other, if opportunity presented. Of course, I wasn't going to hook myself into the wards here like I had done for Olivia. I wasn't going to leave myself vulnerable to Bellacia.

She stood above me, eyes narrowed on something near my head.

I hadn't been able to leave Christian behind.

She cocked her head, examining the picture. “He looks familiar.”

I frowned, then the blood drained from my face. Under Raphael's hand, my golem, looking exactly like my brother, had
very likely been seen
fighting Marsgrove. By some anonymous student. By someone who would sell such memories to the press.

I shoved it under my pillow, closed my eyes again, and tried to keep my breathing even. “Probably. The terrorists used some sort of familiarity enchantment to make themselves look like loved ones.”

A tinkling sound of laughter, far too close. “How interesting. What new tech is that?”

“How should I know? Look it up.” I turned toward the wall. Twelve hours in here. Maybe I could figure out how to get the workroom to hook directly into the rejuvenation wards and sleep there. But if
Dare
couldn't... He had a thousand things set up to ignore Constantine, but he still had to sleep in the same room.

I focused on breathing.

“Why would I look it up?” I could hear her sitting back on her own bed. “There are plenty of people who can look through captured memories and find the edges of the magic—to see what was actually at play today.”

“Where's
your
roommate?” I asked, going on the offensive. With someone else, I'd never dare risk bringing someone pain. At the moment, with Bellacia, well, I didn't quite care.

“She switched temporarily to her sister's room,” she said lightly. “Her sister's roommate is in Medical, and they set up a triangulation. She'll be back on her feet in a week.”

She laughed. “It's perfect really. You'll be here for
just
the right amount of time, then everything will be back to the way it used to be.”

I understood clearly. The way it was before I came to campus. Because after a week, she was expecting that I'd be
gone
. Locked away for the good of all.

“Because of what you are, of course,” she said in a musing tone.

“Female?” Everyone
knew
what I was at this point. They just couldn't yet
prove
it.

“What I don't know is how you got onto campus and where you came from,” she said, ignoring my response.

I said nothing.

“Maybe I need to find the boy in the picture. Women would do a lot for a guy that looked like that. He's gorgeous.”

I laughed, the sound short. “Sure. You do that. You find him.”