SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Two
Head pounding, ears ringing, Nick closed his eyes and took a few minutes to meditate on recovering. When he was feeling somewhat less ruffled, he opened his eyes. Someone had propped his body on his bench seat, using the backpack to keep him upright.
Outside the window more vineyards sped by. As the memory of what had happened inside the bus surged, Nick turned his head to check that the glimmerling was gone—and flinched. Beside him, reading a book, sat some cologne-obsessed boy, invading his territorial bubble with the sweet stench of Axe and the sight of a very peculiar grin. He was thumbing through one of their schoolbooks—Spell Crafts: Creating Magical Objects—and humming a vaguely familiar tune. The boy sniggered at a passage in the book of magic before snapping it shut and looking over at Nick.
“Professor Duchaine said I should keep an eye on you,” the boy declared. “In case you have a concussion and fall down dead, I’m to let him know straight away.”
Nick fidgeted to a more comfortable position. “Gee thanks. I feel all warm and fuzzy now.”
The boy stuck a hand out. “I’m Richard Warfield. Don’t call me Dick.”
Out of reflex, Nick shook his hand. “Nick Hammond. Um, don’t call me Dick either.” Now that he was looking directly at the boy—Richard—for the first time, Nick found he could not look away. Richard had a smooth spotless face (save for a crooked grin) but his eyes seemed a bit too close together, giving him an air of intense awareness, augmented by a knowing grin.
“Nick Hammond? Really?” Richard said. “So we got two celebrities on our bus today. Cool.”
He’d been called a celebrity—and worse—before, usually by the witch and wizard guests his parents were forever inviting over to their stupid neighborhood séances. So it didn’t faze Nick. But another? Glancing around as if he could spot the other celebrity by sight, Nick said, “Who’s the other?”
“Are you serious?” Richard pointed up front. “Agabus Duchaine.”
Nick shrugged. “Oh right. Mom said he was kind of a big deal back in the day.”
Richard twisted a bit more to look directly at Nick, regaining his attention, which had wandered to the aisle in search of the mythic. “He’s still a big deal. He was the first one to figure out how to stop a golem. And he just took out a glimmerling, on the road! Plus, he literally wrote the book on killing mythics.”
Nick rubbed his head. A bruise was forming into a right nice lump. “What do you mean?”
Richard’s peculiar grin briefly gave way to a look of amazed shock before reasserting itself. He bent down and dug through his backpack. He came up with a hard back, the cover comprised of some sort of dried hide wrapped around a thin slab of wood. It was a copy of the book the glimmerling had used for a mouth. The embossed title read: FANTASTIC BEASTS AND HOW TO KILL THEM. Richard cracked the spine, opening it to the final page. There, grinning out at them was a picture of Agabus Duchaine. Nick’s gaze traveled from the picture over to the real deal. Jabbering away at the front of the bus, Duchaine pounded a fist against the dash.
“Is that a CB he’s using?” Nick asked.
Richard nodded. The Citizens Band was the only communication device that worked around this many practitioners. “He’s talking to the DME about the escaped glimmerling.”
Nick didn’t know anything about mythics, and only very little about the wards placed around the Adirondack Preserve to keep creatures inside, but he didn’t imagine things often escaped. “Is this the first time one has gotten out?”
As Duchaine swallowed back a curse up front, Richard nodded. “I guess we’re lucky it was only a glimmerling and not something buffers could clearly see. Something that could kill them.” The peculiar grin faded a bit at the edges as the boy skimmed through Fantastic Beasts. A few seconds later he stopped at a page devoted to something called a shaga. An artist’s rendering of a glowing buffalo-sized monster filled the page. “Can you imagine if a shaga had escaped?”He traced an imaginary headline through the air. “Mysterious killings. Mass hysteria swallows New York. Conspiracy theorists would have a field day.” Richard put the book away and sat back.
Duchaine finished chewing out whoever was on the other end of the line and then slammed the mike back into its slot. Stroking his beard, he glanced at the back. His sharp gaze caught Nick. In that moment Nick understood why this man was a legend.
He silently thanked the stars he wasn’t a mythic.
An hour passed with the only entertainment being the warlock casting more smoldering rue leaves over the ensnared glimmerling to keep it placid.
A few miles off Route 25 they passed through a dinky little town north of Rome. Clouds began to form overhead as the buses cruised through the narrow streets. They took the western path and, within minutes, left the village in their wake. Out here in the boonies potholed roads turned into stone lanes. Ramshackle houses dotted the landscape; telephone poles vanished, to be replaced by ancient trees bent into gnarled ungodly shapes, home to countless ravens and hosts of vermin. The gray Adirondack Mountains rose up on the horizon, shadowed by roving storm clouds.
Soon the stone lane they were on gave way to a dirt path.
As the buses bounced and sprang over divots and dips, Nick closed his eyes, trying not to puke. “Are we there yet?”
Richard snorted. “We haven’t even stopped at Coven Acres yet. After that it’s still a long minute hike up the mountains in those stupid shaky carriages.”
Nick’s eyes whipped open. “Wait, what?”
“You never heard about Coven Acres?” Richard asked. “Swapping rides, inspections by Mage officers, all that jazz? Wow. I guess your parents forgot to mention it.”
“I’m getting the feeling they ‘forgot’ to mention a lot of things,” Nick muttered, stretching. The bus bounced as Driver Jensen led it over a speed bump on the path leading up to a tall wrought iron gate. It rolled to a stop about twenty feet from the gate, brakes squealing.
Duchaine handed the reins of the silver net over to Driver Jensen before hopping off the bus to go and unlock the gates. His key ring jangled as he searched for the right key. A Mage officer appeared on the other side of the fence, sporting his own key ring. The two men spoke briefly. Duchaine produced a badge, showed it to the Mage officer. Seconds later he returned; behind him the Mage was unlocking the gate and spreading a line of salt along the threshold.
Stilted glimmerling back under his control, Duchaine nodded at Driver Jensen. A rough lurch and the bus started up again, crunching over the dirt and salt on its way into the Adirondack Preserve.
The world seemed to darken during their trek up the foot of the mountains, overcast sky becoming a mass of heaving clouds, black and gray and threatening; thunder began to bellow and heat lightning flashed in the distance.
Everyone was on edge, gazing out their windows (some of which were broken, jagged pyramids of glass like busted teeth in their frames) as the bus began to sputter a couple miles in. By the time they reached the stonewalled confines of Coven Acres, the buses were belching gray smoke. The one ahead of them stalled just inside the entrance of the witch village.
It was two O’clock in the afternoon, but dark as bedtime. In the yawning shadows Duchaine started dragging the glimmerling down out of the bus, letting the assembled books bang against each step.
Once outside he was met by the teacher from the other bus, a sleek woman with more than a smidgen of American Indian in her features. She offered to lend a hand with Duchaine’s prize catch. The warlock was declining her offer when a small hassled-looking man ran up to them, gasping for breath. The man said something Nick couldn’t hear.
Duchaine handed the ties of the silver net over to the man and then stepped back up into the bus. “Jensen, there’s a situation. I’m gonna borrow the hansom cab. You take your time bringing the kids up, okay?” Without waiting for Jensen’s response, he jumped down out of the bus and ran off towards a small one-horse carriage. Displaying agility Nick would not have expected of the hefty man, Duchaine hopped into the hansom cab, snapped the reins and sped off along a slope leading out of the village and up the mountain, disappearing into the darkness of the tree-lined wheel-rutted path.
A few moments later the sleek woman entered. Excited chatter gave way to hushed calm. “Okay, everyone off the bus,” the woman spoke with a slight accent.
No one got up.
Finally Nick asked the question quivering on everyone’s lips. “What’s Mister Duchaine doing?”
Pin-drop silence as they waited for an answer.
“Nothing serious,” the woman assured them. “It seems there was a slight kerfuffle at the edge of the Institute’s grounds, but I’m sure our resident warlock will have it well in hand by the time we reach the school. Now, grab your things and head over to the carriages. It’s going to start raining soon, so unless you want to get soaked, I suggest you hop it along.”
As the students stood and stretched and exited the bus, Nick asked Richard, “What the flip is a kerfuffle? Have you ever heard that term before?”
Richard shrugged. “I think I heard it once on a show. Pretty sure it means trouble, or something like that.”
Obviously it means something like that, Nick thought, hopping down onto the driveway. He’d just never heard anyone say kerfuffle when they meant trouble. “I think she made it up.”
Within minutes everyone, from the tiny novices, to the eager apprentices, to the confident journeymen, was crammed into numerous large road coaches. Crinkling their noses at the stink of fresh horse plop, the teens and tweens made crude jokes. Outside Nick’s carriage Driver Jensen (who had already stowed the glimmerling in a compartment) was slowly going over the equipment, checking the underside, inspecting the reins for cracks, examining the horse’s shoes for wear. When Jensen decided to light the kerosene lamps—and take his time about it—Bruno huffed and puffed. “What is taking that cabbie so frigging long?”
Two minutes later, Jensen tediously taking a match to the wick, Bruno stuck his head out the port-hole window and bellowed, “Hey cabbie! Let’s go already! People are starving in here.”
Driver Jensen waved and smiled, as if Bruno had just complimented his excellent work. Finally, two minutes later, the man climbed up to the driver’s bench and snapped the reins.
As Richard had warned, the ride up the mountain to the school was indeed jarring. The chattering turned to speculation on what kerfuffle Agabus Duchaine might be handling, and whether or not they’d get a chance to witness the legend doing a bit of de-kerfuffling. Nick grabbed his FAD to Google ‘kerfuffle’. He wasn’t completely surprised to find it didn’t even power up. Leaning over to Richard, who was sitting beside him, Nick whispered, “My folks told me computers and FADs and stuff don’t work near the school. How come?”
“Something to do with the massive amount of residual magic around the Institute,” Richard said. “It disrupts all electronic signals or something. Personally, I think they’ve got special devices in the school basement that short-circuit all other devices.”
“What for?” Nick retorted. “The ambiance?”
Richard shrugged. “So we can’t let the world know what they’re doing, maybe?”
Sitting across from the boys was a girl already dressed in her school uniform. Caramel-colored legs and arms crossed, eyes closed. She looked to be at least a first year journeyman, the same grade as Nick, about fifteen years old. A spider-web of black talismanic tattoos converged around her eyes like heavy mascara, and a vertically arranged spell of Latin words crept down her chin, giving the girl a fierce shamanic visage. Each time the carriage jostled over a divot or bumped over a jutting stone, her chest bounced.
Nick was having a hard time not staring.
Nick was staring when another girl caught him watching. She elbowed Tattoo. Nick procured his patented cool smirk when she laid her dark eyes on his. She flipped him the bird.
In the wake of this fun little encounter, the trip up the mountain took about a thousand years. Nick inwardly rejoiced when they rolled into Bolton Landing, a village overlooking Lake George and comprised entirely of a sprawling castle, materialized out of the mist and darkness. Another set of wrought iron gates met them, these ones reinforced by a five-foot stone wall (about the height of the fence impaled atop the wall), and capped with barbed wire and iron spikes welded. Every few yards written and enchanted wards dotted the thick fence posts. You could almost see them surging with power.
Two beefy men opened the gates. Strapped to their waists were elegantly crafted leather scabbards, a length of lethal steel poking out the bottom, with shorter black-handled daggers blessed with runes (Nick recognized these as athame, a vital wizard tool, and one of the items he’d purchased in Border City) attached on the opposite hip, with a few pouches nestled in between. Up front Driver Jensen snapped the reins and the carriage jerked forward, rolling though the open gate, past the armed guards.
“What do they have in there, King Kong?” Nick joked.
“More like they’re trying to keep King Kong out of here,” Bruno said from Nick’s other side.
“Dude, I was just joking,” Nick rejoined. “Don’t be so serious all the time.” He watched as Bruno’s face scrunched up. The dude would sulk—Nick had expected it; even he couldn’t take the bull out of the bully in a single day. It would take time to mold Bruno Groothius into the useful partner Nick needed for his Plan.
Thunder boomed as the horses clomped to a stop before a wide set of stone steps. Watching the first drops of rain patter onto the stairs, Nick couldn’t help but notice that the entire facility looked to be comprised of one gigantic rock, as if the Institute had been carved out of the mountain rather than built. He couldn’t imagine how long such a project would take.
Bruno moved to exit the carriage, but Driver Jensen met him at the door, along with an older woman who looked like she wanted to give everyone detention. “We ask that you all remain in your seats just a little while longer,” Driver Jensen said.
“Are you serious?” Bruno shrilled.
Driver Jensen nodded. Lightning flashed, illuminating the man’s angular face. He had a desperate look, manic eyes. “Duchaine and some other members of the staff are dealing with a mythic that managed to get onto the grounds. It’s not entirely safe. So please bear with us.”
“A mythic?” Bruno said. “Are you serious? First a glimmerling attacks us—outside the Preserve—and now some other mythic is loose on school grounds? What kind of backwoods buffer program are you jokers running here?”
Nick and Richard clamped hands over their mouths to stifle bursts of laughter.
“Just a few more minutes,” Jensen promised. “Shouldn’t take long. Duchaine is the best there is; plus, it’s raining now, so that’ll make things easier.”
“What the freaking heck does that even mean, ‘It’ll be easier because it’s raining’?” a hysterical note had crept into Bruno’s voice.
In response, Driver Jensen slammed the door in his face.
Bruno plopped back into his seat and started squirming.
A light bulb flicked on in Nick’s head. “Dude, you gotta use the bathroom, don’t you? That’s why you were all over the driver.”
“Shut up,” Bruno snapped, scowling at the girl with the tattoos.
Perhaps the rain did help, because it wasn’t much longer after this that Duchaine showed up, covered in mud, sporting scorch marks on his vest, but otherwise appearing fine, chipper even. He dug the net out the carriage compartment, kicked the books until they started shifting of their own accord (no doubt making sure the glimmerling was still ensnared), and proceeded to drag it away without a word.
Jensen opened the door and students wrangled to escape the stuffy confines of the carriage. Bruno shoved aside two boys to be the first one out, and hustled up the steps, not bothering to grab his things and not even slowing down when he slipped five treads up. It was the restroom or bust for that boy, make no mistake.
The little novice girl to whom the books belonged leaped over puddles to catch up to the warlock. “Excuse me, Professor Duchaine, sir?”
“Yes?”
“Will I be getting my books back?”
This seemed to stump the man for a solid five seconds. “Of course. What’s your name?”
The girl answered. “Well,” Duchaine said, “I promise you, Alice, that just as soon as I have this mythic caged and disanimated from your books, I will make sure they are promptly returned to you. No worries.”
Alice beamed up at him and then ran along to catch up with her tiny fellow novices.
Inside his cage Severus slept. Nick was careful not to jostle the tomcat as he got out and followed the flow of students up to the castle. In late afternoon gloom and through the rain, the grounds were difficult to make out.
Dim light from oil lamps posted along the deck railings reflected off stained glass windows. Nick squinted. Had he seen movement beneath those flames? Something in the shadows? Probably just his mind playing games. Hunched beneath the weight of his backpack, Nick turned to Richard on the flight of stairs. “What do you think it was Duchaine was hunting?”
“A golem, most like,” Richard said.
“A golem?” Nick wondered. “Like in Lord of the Rings?” They’d reached the landing where three roaring flames under a protruding archway offered plenty of light.
Richard laughed once. “No. Gollum was just the name of a character. Golems are huge mythics made of stone and dirt. Driver Jensen said the rain would help, and Duchaine’s book says golems don’t do well when they get wet. It was Duchaine who first figured that out. Plus the scorch marks are a dead giveaway.”
Nick had spent most of his life enjoying the sublime sensation of feeling smarter than all his peers (especially since his peers in buffer school didn’t know dick about the Arts), but when it came to mythics he was quickly discovering—to his dismay—that he had a huge learning curve to master. Thanks for filling me in, mom, Nick ruminated.
Entering through the double, iron-hinged oak doors, Nick found himself crammed with a couple hundred other students into a circular hall. A Japanese man climbed onto the back of a statue of a centaur and raised an old-school megaphone to his lips. The moment he uttered his first words, every student in the hall fell silent.
“Good afternoon, I am called Yuutu Fukushima—stop laughing, big bird,” he snapped a tall skinny boy who’d chuckled. “I am being manager of the upkeep and improvements here at the Institute. So listen up little zits,” his Japanese accent flavored every word, but Nick could still understand him just fine—unfortunately. “I am wanting all of you to place your critters and crap against that section of the wall over there. Once you have done that—hey pimple-popper, you there, did I say go? I do not think so.” A boy suffering from acne froze in his steps. The man continued. “As I was saying. Once you have stowed your crap, you are to silently make your way into the great room which is through these doors on my left. Now, before we do that, I want to be laying down some rules for you rug rats to follow.”
Before he could continue, the teacher from the other bus reached up and snatched at his megaphone. Yuutu tried to fend her off. But he was wiry and small. The teacher took the megaphone and, after wiping its mouthpiece with her blouse, put it up to her lips.
“Please excuse Yuutu, he’s a bit of an idiot.” She was interrupted when Yuutu tried yanking the megaphone from her grasp again. Eventually she won the tug-o-war. The man folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the statue.
“If you place your things by the wall,” the teacher continued, “Yuutu will be happy to spend the next few hours delivering them out to your appropriate dorms. He won’t even use his assistant ground crew, he’ll do it all by himself. Go ahead. Quickly now, students.” She smiled at Yuutu, who most definitely did not return her expression.
Ten minutes later everyone was seated in the great room, chatting away. In place of tables there were dozens of sofas, couches, loveseats, and rocking chairs, all arranged in what Nick immediately identified—thanks to his mom’s obsession—as feng shui. To a buffer it would likely appear haphazard, messy. But the arrangement promoted a sense of ease and relaxation. Nick was chatting beside Richard, taking in the peculiar light bulbs humming in sconces high up along the stone walls. They looked like something Edison himself had contrived and rigged up. Bruno plopped down on the other side of Nick, making him sink deeper into the cushions.
“Feel better?” Nick smirked.
“Loads,” Bruno exhaled. “Did I miss Fukushima’s rant?”
Richard nodded.
“Dang it,” Bruno pounded the arm of the sofa. “That’s always the highlight of our first day,” he said, nudging Nick in the ribs. As the bully rambled on, pointing out the stupid haircuts of what Nick assumed were his regular victims, and laughing at the nervous fidgeting of little novices, the American Indian teacher appeared before them.
“Nick Hammond?”
Nick nodded, experiencing that cold rush he’d suffered so often back in his buffer school when the teachers would come to deliver his detention sentence. Was he in trouble already? He tried to think back to what he might’ve done to deserve this attention. Maybe the teachers had heard about that whole wardstone business. I knew I wasn’t gonna get off that easy.
“Come with me, please,” the teacher said.
As Nick stood, Bruno uttered a low “Oooh, you’re in trouble,” and laughed.
At the doorway Nick looked back into the great room. A hush had fallen. Up front on the podium a tall black man, head shaven, fingers be-ringed, was walking toward the altar.
Reluctantly Nick followed the teacher out into the circular hall, through a doorway draped in transparent vertical heat blinds, and down a few steps into a long breezeway. Arched sandstone windows on either side came to sharp points. The September rain did not enter the windows, but the biting chill of the wind did, creeping past Nick’s hoodie and seeping into his bones. Once again, when he peered out into the darkness, Nick thought he caught a glimpse of some jagged shadow moving. A trick of the flame-light, he figured.
On the fringes of his perceptions, Nick detected faint music, a soft choir singing a hymn.
The teacher turned left at the end of the breezeway and gestured for Nick to enter through a solid oak door down two steps into a room. He obeyed. No point stirring the hornets’ nest.
Taking a seat in a brown leather office chair opposite the desk, Nick scanned the large room, waiting for the inevitable hammer-fall. The desk and wood cabinet behind it were set apart from what was clearly the purpose of this room: the healing arts. Shallow wooden shelves lined one long wall, each section crammed with labeled vials and concoctions. Several comfy looking wicker cots were arranged in the center of the room. Instant fantasies sprang into Nicks mind. He hoped they’d use this room for hands-on techniques in the healing arts. Maybe little energy transfers via laying-on of hands. That chick with the tats would make a nice practice patient, Nick mused.
As the teacher took her own seat in a luxurious reclining chair, Nick read her brass nameplate: Amberly Lamborghini.
She said, “Dean Delacort asked me to take you aside during the sorting.”
Okay, here it is: punish-Nick time.
Ms. Lamborghini fingered through the pile of manila folders on her desk, finally plucking a thin one from the middle. She opened it and read. “These are your Magical Aptitude Test application results. Do you know what you scored?”
Maybe this isn’t about punishment after all. Nick shrugged. Let’s have some fun. “Judging by my singling out here, I’d say I scored rather high—maybe even a perfect score.”
“A five hundred,” Lamborghini confirmed. “It is . . . almost unbelievable.”
Nick nodded. “Am I the first student to ever score a five-hundred on the MAT?”
The teacher shifted in her chair, sitting up straighter. “Not the first. But it hasn’t happened in a long time. Not since . . .” she cleared her throat, changed tack. “Considering your scores and your circumstances, we are willing to wave tradition and permit you to choose your dorm.”
Weighing the advantages and pitfalls of each dorm against his Plan, Nick decided. “Do you know that girl with the face tattoos?”
“That would be Delrisa Morgana,” Ms. Lamborghini said, placing Nick’s test results back in the manila folder. Her eyes scrunched up as she scrutinized him. A look of disappointment? “I wouldn’t suggest choosing a dorm based on a girl.”
“Neither would I,” Nick said quickly. “Word’ll get out that I chose my dorm, and when it does, rumors will fly about why I chose that specific one. If Delrisa senses I have . . . um, an interest in her, she’ll figure I chose her dorm just because she was there.”
A look of discomfort wiped the disappointment from Ms. Lamborghini’s face. “So you want to know which one she’s in so you can choose one of the other four. I see.” She dug through the permanent files. “Well, last year Miss Morgana was in Dorm Voodoo. Judging by her End of Year Exam scores, Dean Delacort will likely be placing her there again this year.”
“And what about Bruno Groothius?”
“Ah,” Lamborghini returned Morgana’s file to its proper place but did not bother flipping through the ‘G’ section. “Bruno has been in Dorm Necromancy every year since he was a First Year Novice. So I imagine nothing’s changed. I understand why you would wish to avoid his dorm.” She paused, eyes lowered. “That was inappropriate of me. Forget I said it. Now let’s see, that leaves Gypsy, Wiccan, and Enochian.”
“Necromancy,” Nick said with unflinching certainty.
Lamborghini stumbled through some questions and declarations, eventually filling out the form to officially assign Nick to Dorm Necromancy. Paperwork signed, he stood, a grin creasing his face. His decision was clearly beyond Ms. Lamborghini’s comprehension. She was staring.
“What are you looking for?” Nick demanded.
The healing arts teacher flinched as though she’d been caught filching a gold ring. “I’m not looking for anything, dear.” She paused, and their eyes met.
Instantly Nick sensed something other attempting to penetrate his mind. His dad had taught him about this. Apparently Ms. Lamborghini was trying to put him into an alpha wave consciousness, making him prone to mind-to-mind probing, which would allow the teacher to perceive, if not his thoughts, then his general intentions.
Instead of shying from her, Nick met Ms. Lamborghini’s eyes and gazed into their green depths, redirecting his Third Eye and using the energy of her focus to retrain the target on her mind. She recoiled as though struck. Snapped her eyes closed to break the connection.
But she was too slow. Nick had already latched onto her probe and used it to steal a glimpse beyond the veil of her mind. He planted his hands on the desk and leaned over.
“Offering me the opportunity to choose dorms was not the only reason you led me down here, alone, was it, Professor?”
She tried to compose herself, but Ms. Lamborghini’s hands were shaking.
Nick continued. “The Dean wanted you to see if you could . . . sense something in me. If I had to guess, I’d say he wants to know if my engineered abilities include a penchant for sorcery. He wants to know if I’m evil. That is what you are looking for, isn’t it?”
Mirroring his posture, she leaned over the desk. “And I’d say I found it. Only those drawn to sorcery possess the innate ability to pierce the auric field of an adept witch. I wondered why you would choose Necromancy. Now I know. It’s the Dorm closest in connection to the Dark Arts.”
Nick sank back into his chair, shrugged. “It’s a DME sanctioned dorm.”
“For its use in gathering knowledge about the afterlife and to train the next generation of undertakers.” Lamborghini’s defense of the official branch of magic came as a hushed whisper, as though she were speaking in a hallowed place and trying not to raise her voice. Tension permeated the room as she sifted through a junk drawer, mumbling to herself. Eventually she handed Nick a small black triangular medallion. Three skeletal arms outlined with the words REDUCE, REUSE, and REANIMATE surrounded a skull. The symbol of Dorm Necromancy.
“Wear this pin at all time inside these walls,” Lamborghini ordered. “If you don’t wear it, we might forget where you belong. Oh, and say hi to Vesper Ussane for me.” She grinned.
With those cold words hanging in the air between them, Nick scooted out into the hall. A quick sprint and he was back in the breezeway, cursing. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
He’d shown his hand back there. Now they had at least an inkling of his capabilities, and would be keeping a close eye on him—though not as close as they would if he hadn’t defended himself. They might have discovered his Plans if he’d sat there like some helpless novice. Still, Nick would have to tread carefully now. There was no telling if all the teachers were in on the Dean’s suspicions.
He leaned out one of the windows, letting the damp chill air cool him down. Lightning flashed. Thunder followed hard on its heels. By the time the students settled into their respective dorms, the eye would be right over them.
No doubt the divinations teacher would have something to say about the glimmerling attack, the loose mythic, and the ominous approach of a squall all on their first day. Trotting down the breezeway, he thought he caught something mirroring his every move, but each time he turned to catch a glimpse of the mystery, the phenomenon would vanish into the darkness. He walked on.
Another couple guys had taken Nicks place on the sofa in the great room, and all the other seats were crammed with strangers. The only space left was a cushion beside Delrisa.
Nick remained standing in the doorway.
The man at the altar, apparently done sorting everyone, was now introducing the various teachers. Nick listened in awe as one exotic name after another was declared. Names like Melisandra Mannik for Symbols and Sigils (Nick would have to get in tight with her to seal his deal with Bruno), Oberon Salazar Smoot for Alchemy, Orville Pitts for Magical Lore, Katherine Willowroot for Amulets and Talismans, Anaximander and so on. Finally the Dean introduced Duchaine.
In a deep reverberating voice the Dean explained Duchaine’s presence. “Due to the tragic events last term with the wraith and poor Professor Ashland, I was forced to scour the globe in search of another suitable crypto zoologist with the bravery to maintain our bestiary and to train our journeymen magicians to handle mythics.” The Dean sighed theatrically. “For some reason, none of the practitioners that I interviewed were willing.” Chuckles followed this. “So I turned to a friend in the DME. He suggested a warlock. Following a brief period of surprise and disappointment in my own intellectual abilities for failing to come up with this brilliant solution, I offered the job to three warlocks.” Here he stood back and gestured for Duchaine to take his place at the podium, closing with: “Only one accepted my offer. Agabus Duchaine is either stupendously brave, or he didn’t understand my proposal.”
Brief tittering whisked through the seated students.
The big warlock stood up from his chair behind the Dean and took the podium. There was no microphone and there were no speakers, but the builders of the castle had apparently employed such miraculous skill that the acoustics in the Great Room enhanced and distributed the speaker’s voice to every nook and cranny. Nick attributed this to the oddly dimensioned ceiling; it looked like a giant had carved it with a monstrous spade.
“First,” Duchaine said “everyone should feel comfortable calling me Duchaine. Not Professor. Not Mister or Agabus. Now, many of my associates in the Warlock Division consider the training of young ones to handle mythics a fool’s errand and dangerous to boot. But they’ll all be dead someday—some of them sooner than others—so we’ll need a second generation trained and ready to protect the people of this Preserve, and to keep the daft buffers outside, safe from the real monsters that go bump in the night.” Duchaine cleared his throat, shifted his feet. “Well, um, that’s all for now. I’ll lay down the ground rules tomorrow in class.” He returned to his seat.
The Dean resumed his place at the podium, raised his hands to quell the chatter that had risen at the conclusion of Duchaine’s speech. When it was quiet he said, “One final announcement before you all head off to the delightful meal courtesy of our gnome gardeners: You’ll soon notice that all the mirrors in the Institute, including those in the restrooms, have been removed. This is merely a precaution. The DME has informed us that over the summer the sorcerer known as the ‘Mirrorman’ escaped their custody and has resumed his old tricks.”
The Dean waited a few ticks for everyone to absorb this news.
“I understand the young women will insist on retaining their compact mirrors and what have you. This is fine. But be warned; he might be able to use them as remote scrying devices. So, I’m afraid your vanity may come at a high cost. Well, have an excellent year. So mote it be.”
Following a spectacular meal in a vast circular dining hall decorated with circular tables fitting thirteen students each, Nick followed Bruno up to the second floor Necromancy dorm. Students of all nine grades in the three levels of Novice, Apprentice, and Journeyman, were shuffling into the dorm by passing a garish statue that looked like it would be right at home crouching on the eaves of some dark age cathedral.
“I knew you’d be in Dorm Nec,” Bruno said, gently punching Nick in the shoulder. “Made me fifty bucks on it, in fact.”
“Oh good,” Nick said. “In that case you owe me half.”
“What?”
Restraining a grin, Nick said, “Yeah, I chose Dorm Necromancy. Which means I won your bet for you. Which means you should give me half your winnings. Plus, if you had told me there was a pool on my placement, I would have filled you in on my having a choice and we could’ve cleaned house, made a small fortune.” This wasn’t technically true; Nick had not known he’d be given the option, he had only hoped. “Let this be a lesson to you not to keep things from me.”
Bruno snorted. “Whatever.”
When they approached the doors, the head of the statue suddenly turned.
Bruno staggered backwards. “Holy frigging balls!”
Cracking sounds erupted in the atrium as the hideous stone statue crackled to life and stepped down from its perch. Students fled in all directions. “Is it supposed to be doing that?”
“I’ve never seen it move before!” Bruno scrambled behind a pillar. “I thought it was just a statue, not a frigging real life mythic.”
The gargoyle comprised of living stone sauntered toward Nick. As he recoiled, a faraway voice urged Nick to run, but his legs refused to make any sudden movements. When the gargoyle crouched as though preparing to pounce, Nick stumbled and fell over backwards.