“Come on. Show me what you got.” Mattie waved her student away from the armchairs into the center of her office.
“Show you what?” Cheyenne’s feet whispered across the decades-old carpet until Mattie lifted a hand to stop her.
“What you can do.” With a curt nod, Mattie eyed her student and gestured at the few feet of space between them. “We already made the mistake of assuming I could teach you anything in class, so let’s get on the same page. Show me what you’ve got a good handle on already.”
“Um.” Cheyenne blinked and shook out her hands. The chains clanked against each other, muted by her sleeves. “I mean, I can’t do what you just did.”
“Obviously.” Startled by her own short laugh, Mattie shook her head but didn’t stop smiling. “Go ahead.”
She thinks I can just pull this up on command? Cheyenne glanced at her open palms and shrugged. “Sure.”
She thought about the orc-thug party she’d crashed last night at the skatepark. About the magic she’d unleashed on all of them without even thinking. But standing here in her professor’s office didn’t bring a fresh new wave of inspiration. Sounds like she wants a trick.Just summon a light or something. Focusing on one hand, Cheyenne curled her fingers and tried to pull up the soft glow she’d used instead of a flashlight to light her forts as a kid, before she figured out computers were a lot more interesting than a tent made of blankets and chairs. Come on!
The blue glow pulsed for a second in the center of her palm. A long bulb in the light fixture overhead flared, then burst with a pop. Shattered glass rained onto the armchairs. Okay, screw that idea.
She lifted her head to look at Mattie and shrugged.
Professor Bergmann studied the glass on her furniture and floor with raised eyebrows, then tapped a finger on her lips. “Huh.”
“Hey, it’s something.”
“It is.” The corner of Mattie’s mouth twitched. “You can quit playing games now. That should be a new rule too. I know it’s hard to trust another magical you just met—officially, at least—so if it helps, I promise I have nothing to gain from this but satisfaction for not being completely useless to you.”
“Okay. That’s awesome, I guess.” Cheyenne glanced away to avoid seeing Mattie’s expression when she admitted, “I don’t know what you want me to do.”
Mattie gave her an exaggerated laugh. “Oh, come on. Do whatever you think will give me enough of an overview that we can lay the missing groundwork. I won’t say you have to remove all the glass from the floor and my chairs, but it’d be a nice start.”
The half-drow chewed the inside of her lower lip and raised an eyebrow. “Got a broom?”
“What?” The way Mattie cocked her head and turned away from her student seemed much like a cat listening to birds in the yard. “Please don’t tell me the drow halfling hasn’t learned how to cast a spell beyond a flash of light and an accidental lightbulb burst.”
“No problem.” Cheyenne folded her arms. “I can do more than that.”
“So?” The professor gestured toward the open space between them again with a tight, expectant smile. “I’m ready to drop the games.”
“Yeah, me too. But this whole magic-on-command thing isn’t my style.”
“Uh-huh.” By the time Mattie finished sighing, the predatory glint in her eyes had returned. “Okay, I get it. You’ve been doing things on your terms your whole life, and now I’m asking you to do them on mine. I don’t want to pressure you into anything. When you’re ready to come back and put some effort into learning how to control your magic, I’ll be here. Every day. From one to four.” She gestured toward her closed office door and dipped her head.
Oh, sure. It’s always attitude and willful disobedience from the Goth chick, isn’t it? Cheyenne rolled her eyes and didn’t move. “I’m ready to put in the effort now,” she muttered.
“It looks to me more like you’re trying to turn this into a powerplay, and that’s not what I’m interested in.” Mattie turned away from her and went back to her L-shaped desk. “I’m aware of where I stand in the scheme of things. And I have better things to do with my time than spend it on a halfling who pretends to be, I don’t know, whatever the hell you’re going for right now.”
The warmth at the base of Cheyenne’s spine was soft, but it stayed there, a gentle reminder of how far she couldn’t let this go. “Hold up. You’re the one who came to me.” She stepped toward Mattie’s desk. “You told me to come by your office. Trust me, I have better things to do with my time too, Mattie.”
Mattie didn’t look up at her as she shuffled through more papers on her desk. “Yes, I know you’re very busy with all the graduate work you complete in a quarter of the time it takes everyone else. It must be difficult for you to find time for anything.”
“That has nothing to do with it.” Cheyenne swallowed. The heat rose. She balled her hands into fists to force it back down. “If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t have come.”
“Show me you want to be here.”
“I didn’t think I’d be joining the circus and have to perform for you.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“I’m not giving an excuse. Why can’t you show me how to keep anyone else from seeing what I am?” The half-drow’s skin tingled, warmth spreading over her shoulders. Not now!
“Without understanding the skills you already have? I don’t think so.” Mattie tucked her hair behind her ear, still scanning the papers on her desk, and snatched a pen from the glass jar beside her computer. She started writing
