matter how much she wishes it weren’t true. She’ll do the right thing in the end. This is duty. It’s bigger than personal wants. Jill gets that.”
Angeline then declared she needed to get back to her room to catch up on homework. Eddie and I were left staring.
He shook his head in amazement. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Angeline so…”
“… subdued?” I suggested.
“I was thinking… coherent.”
I laughed. “Come on, she’s coherent plenty of times.”
“You know what I mean,” he argued. “What she just said? It was totally true. It was… wise. She understands Jill and this situation.”
“I think she understands more than we give her credit for,” I said, recalling how much better-behaved she’d been since the assembly-breaking into dances aside. “It’s just taken her time to adjust, which makes sense, considering what a change this is. If you’d seen where she’s from, you’d understand.”
“I may have misjudged her,” Eddie admitted. He seemed astonished by his own words.
Part of me had expected to get chastised by Trey today for having skipped out on Brayden at the dance. Instead, I found Trey missing again from our morning classes. I almost worried but then reminded myself that his cousin was still in town, possibly muddling Trey in “family stuff.” Trey was competent. Whatever was going on, he could handle it.
When I reached Ms. Terwilliger’s independent study, she was waiting expectantly for me, which I took as a bad sign. Usually, she was already hard at work at her own desk and just gave me a nod of acknowledgment when I took out my books. Today, she was standing in front of her desk, arms crossed, watching the door.
“Miss Melbourne. I trust you had an enjoyable weekend? You were certainly the belle of the ball at the Halloween dance.”
“You saw me?” I asked. For a moment, I expected her to say she’d been watching the whole dance through a crystal ball or something.
“Well, certainly. I was there as a chaperone. My post was near the DJ, so I’m not surprised you didn’t see me. That, and I hardly stood out the way you did. I must say, that was an exquisite neo-Greco reproduction you were wearing.”
“Thanks.” I was getting compliments left and right today, but hers were much less creepy than Jill’s.
“Now then,” said Ms. Terwilliger, all business again. “I thought it might be useful for us to discuss some of the spells you’ve been researching for my project. Notating them is one thing. Understanding them is another.”
My stomach sank. I’d grown comfortable in my avoidance of her and the repetitive, almost mindless nature of annotating and translating spells. So long as we didn’t have to actually delve into them, I felt reassured that I wasn’t doing anything real with magic. I dreaded whatever she had in mind, but there was little I could make in the way of protest, so long as this was all couched in the terms of my study and didn’t involve harm to myself or others.
“Would you be kind enough to close the door?” she asked. I did, and my feeling of unease increased. “Now. I wanted to examine that book I gave you further-the one on protective spells.”
“I don’t have it with me, ma’am,” I said, relieved. “But if you want, I’ll go get it from my dorm room and bring it back.” If I timed the shuttle bus right-by which I meant, wrong-I could probably use up a huge part of our hour in the round-trip.
“That’s all right. I obtained that copy for your personal use.” She lifted a book from her desk. “I have my own. Let’s take a look, shall we?”
I couldn’t hide my dismay. We sat in adjacent student desks, and she began by simply going over the table of contents with me. The book was divided into three sections: Defense, Planned Attacks, and Instant Attacks. Each of those subsections was divided into levels of difficulty.
“Defense includes a lot of protective charms and evasion spells,” she told me. “Why do you think those come first in the book?”
“Because the best way to win a fight is to avoid one,” I said immediately. “Makes the rest superfluous.”
She looked startled that I had come up with that. “Yes… precisely.”
“That’s what Wolfe said,” I explained. “He’s the instructor in a self-defense class I’m taking.”
“Well, he’s quite right. Most of the spells in this section do exactly that. This one…” She flipped a few pages into the book. “This one’s very basic but extremely useful. It’s a concealment spell. Many physical components- which you’d expect from a beginner spell-but well worth it. You create an amulet and keep a separate ingredient- crumbled gypsum-on hand. When you’re ready to activate it, add the gypsum, and the amulet comes to life. It makes it nearly impossible for someone to see you. You can leave a room or area in safety, undetected, before the magic wears off.”
The wording wasn’t lost on me, and in spite of my inner resistance, I couldn’t help but ask: “‘Nearly impossible?’”
“It won’t work if they actually know you’re there,” she explained. “You can’t just cast it and become invisible- though there are more advanced spells for that. But if someone isn’t actively expecting to see you… well, they won’t.”
She showed me others, many of which were basic and amulet based, requiring a similar means of activation. One that she dubbed intermediate had kind of a reverse activation process. The caster wore an amulet that protected her when she cast the rest of the spell-one that made all people within a certain radius go temporarily blind. Only the caster retained sight. Listening, I still squirmed at the thought of using magic to directly affect someone else. Concealing yourself was one thing. But blinding someone? Making them dizzy? Forcing them to sleep? It crossed that line, using wrong and unnatural means to do things humans had no business doing.
And yet… deep inside, some part of me could see the usefulness. The attack had made me reconsider all sorts of things. As much as it pained me to admit it, I could even see how giving blood to Sonya might not be so bad.
I listened patiently as she went through the pages, all the while wondering what her game was here. Finally, when we had five minutes left of class, she told me, “For next Monday, I’d like you to re-create one of these, just as you did with the fire amulet and write a paper on it.”
“Ms. Terwilliger-” I began.
“Yes, yes,” she said, closing the book and standing up. “I’m well aware of your arguments and objections, how humans aren’t meant to wield such power and all of that nonsense. I respect your right to feel that way. No one’s making you use any of this. I just want you to continue getting a feel for the construction.”
“I can’t,” I said adamantly. “I won’t.”
“It’s no different than dissecting a frog in biology,” she argued. “Hands-on work to understand the material.”
“I guess…” I relented, glumly. “Which one do you want me to do, ma’am?”
“Whichever you like.”
Something about that bothered me even more. “I’d rather you choose.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You have freedom in your larger term paper and freedom in this. I don’t care what you do, so long as the assignment’s complete. Go with what interests you.”
And that was the problem. In having me choose, she was making me get invested in the magic. It was easy for me to claim no part in it and point out that everything I did for her was under duress. Even if this assignment was technically dictated by her, that one small choice she’d given me forced me to become proactive.
So, I put the decision off-which was almost unheard of for me when it came to homework. Some part of me thought that maybe if I ignored the assignment, it would go away or she’d change her mind. Besides, I had a week. No point in stressing about it yet.
Although I knew we had no obligation to Lia for giving us the costumes, I still felt the appropriate thing to do was return them to her-just so there was no doubt of my intentions. Once Ms. Terwilliger released me, I packed up my and Jill’s costumes into their garment bags and headed into downtown. Jill was sad to let hers go but conceded that it was the right thing to do.
Lia, however, felt otherwise.
“What am I going to do with these?” she asked when I showed up at her shop. Large rhinestone hoop earrings made her dazzling to look at. “They were custom made for you.”
