Demon Accords 8: College Arcane (16 page)

“Hello… warlock here… remember?” I asked.

“You know what? I got paired with that
foreign witch, Zuzanna, today, as my escort. She kept asking
questions about you.” Ariel said. “She’s a bit freaked out that
you’re a dual-affinity warlock, something she’d never heard of, and
she’s really impressed with your skill. Then there’s the comment
that vampire chick, Katrina, made… you’re like the only witch that
Chris Gordon trusts.”

“Not true. He trusts my aunt,” I said,
spearing another sushi roll and dipping it in soy sauce this time.
Caeco had turned me onto sushi and I liked it, but definitely not
the wasabi sauce.

“Yeah, Zuzanna had a whole bunch of questions
about your aunt as well,” Ariel said.

“What? What did she want to know?” I asked,
food forgotten.

“If O’Carroll was really her last name, where
she was from in Ireland, stuff like that,” Ariel replied, eyes wide
at my response.

“Listen, we’ve strayed off topic. We need to
get back to the important stuff—how hot was this elf girl
without
her magical makeup?” T.J. asked.

“Well, she was pretty, I guess, quite pretty,
but no more so than the girls here,” I said with a wave around our
table and at the other tables. “It was the illusion that made her
standout from other girls.”

My glance had made eye contact with all four
girls at my table and now they all sat upright, with expressions of
surprise and unconcealed pleasure.

“You blarney speaking smooth talker, you,”
Ashley said.

“Well, if ye don’t mind me saying, good
blarney is always based on the truth, jest more of it, ye see?” I
responded, smiling. My comment had been sincere, though, and they
all knew it.

“Are all warlocks such bullshitters?” Jetta
asked, giving me a smile to take any sting out of her question.

“Aunt Ash won’t call me a warlock. Says I’m
not one and she hopes I’ll never be one. Won’t tell me what that
means, though. She just says that the meaning of the word has been
lost over the years and now people use it to refer to any male
witch. She says that’s not right,” I said.

“Have you researched whatever she’s talking
about?” Ashley asked.

“Yeah, nothing on the web and most of my
non-digital sources have given me zilch. There is one source, but I
promised I wouldn’t go there yet.”

“Hey, we got class in like five minutes,”
Mack suddenly said, looking up from his phone. I think he’d been
Snapchatting a girl from one of his college classes and must have
noticed the time.

We grabbed our plates and headed to the
clean-up station. Caeco and Justin turned off in the direction of
the gym while the rest of us went to the Explorations classroom. I
snuck a quick kiss before letting my little killer head out. Jetta
smirked at me and Mack made a little heart shape with the fingers
of both hands over his chest.

Inside our classroom, a note on the
smartboard told us to head to the basement level.

Downstairs, following the rest of our
classmates, we found an enormous open space, broken up by massive
support pillars.

Miss Berg was waiting for us near the
overhead door that led to a ramp up to ground level. Bricks and
lumber were stacked near her, as well as a kiddie pool full of
water and some tools.

“I’ve received all your suggestions, which
ranged from somewhat simple to overly verbose,” she said, her eyes
moving over us. “I think to start off, we’ll construct an obstacle
course with these materials and then we’ll practice moving avatars
through it. So let’s dig in and put a serious course together. I
have some plans here for what I have in mind.” She held up a fairly
talented sketch of balance beams, ramps, brick climbing walls, and
even a swing over a pool of water.

“Ah, Miss Berg? How are we going to have
avatars? We aren’t all earth witches, like Michelle and Declan,”
Erika asked.

“Ah, don’t worry about that. We have several
strong telekinetics and nine witches. Every witch born has some
telekinetic power, even Declan, right dear?” she asked, looking at
me.

Someday I would realize just what a pivotal
moment that was, and wonder what might have been if I’d had ten
seconds more. I had decided that hiding my power was a dead end and
that seemed the perfect time to display just a bit of it. Lifting
her off her feet and flying her around the room would prove my
point to her and everyone else. But just as I made the decision,
footsteps pounded across the flat concrete and an excited voice
yelled in echoes. “I got them! Miss Berg, you scored big time,”
T.J. hollered, carrying a big cardboard box in his stretched-out
arms.

He dumped the box onto the ground and it
flipped on its side, the contents spilling out in a tangle of
plastic arms, legs, and multicolored hair. I wasn’t entirely sure,
but from my angle, it looked to be full of Barbie dolls with a Ken
thrown in here and there for good measure.

Miss Berg lit up with a smile, her question
to me forgotten and my moment gone.

“Perfect T.J., just perfect. I saw them at
that Recycle store in the toy section,” she said. “They were still
there when I went by today.”

Grabbing a blonde specimen dressed in a tiny
jean skirt and white blouse, she set it upright on the floor and
when she pulled her hand back, it stayed standing on its own. Then
it moved, the legs and arms jerking it forward in a grotesque
approximation of walking.

“Takes a bit to get the hang of it,” she
laughed a little, self-conscious. Her Barbie started to smooth out
a bit but its joints were stiff and rigid, its awkward motion
frankly creeping me the F out. She walked it over to a stack of
bricks and reached its little stiff plastic hands up to grasp the
top edge of a three stack. After fumbling a bit, she managed to
make the doll climb up, its joints creaking as she forced it to
simulate natural movement.

This wasn’t my childhood game; there was no
creation or imagination, no finesse or skill, just using brute
power to operate a readymade alternative to a dirt dude.

My fellow classmates didn’t share my opinion,
as the witch girls rushed forward to claim their own dolls. Funny
how they tended to grab one with the same hair color as their own.
The three kids who had demonstrated telekinesis also moved up and
grabbed a doll, too. Soon the better part of a dozen of Mattel
Corp.’s finest creations were teetering about the floor. Miss Berg
put the other kids to work creating ramps and raised wooden
walkways for the bizarre horde of perky plastic people.

T.J. was tinkering with a different toy that
he’d pulled from the bottom of the box. It was small white robot,
the miniature version of a much bigger, much more capable
programmable home robot. His version was never meant to actually do
as much as its big brother, but T.J.’s dexterous fingers were
disassembling it and reassembling it in ways its designers had
never dreamed of. Watching him with my Sight, I could see the magic
at work as he took apart another couple of broken toys from the box
and added their parts to his new creation. He was done in five
minutes and when he added batteries to it, his little ‘bot marched
into the middle of the rapidly growing obstacle course and
proceeded to put the ungainly Barbizoids to shame.

“You’re not participating, Mr. O’Carroll?”
Miss Berg said suddenly from my side. She handed me a Ken doll and
motioned me into the fray. “This was, after all, your idea,” she
said before moving over to direct the construction of a brick
pyramid.

I looked at the toy in my hands and
considered all the ways it was wrong. Bending one leg on it, I felt
the joint ratchet, the design intended to hold the new position and
not flow smoothly like a real leg would. My dirt people were
usually built over a skeleton of wood and wire, but the joints were
left free and loose.

Concentrating on the plastic and the wire
frame it covered, I made some modifications. Plastic flowed and
metal smoothed until its legs and arms swung freely, the joints now
fully flexible. I set Ken down and walked him into the fray, his
motion entirely different than the others.

“Jest how are ye doing that, ye cheating
bastard?” Ryanne asked, admiring Ken’s smooth gait. The other doll
drivers started to pay attention as I
pulled
her
black-haired Barbie from the floor to my hand with a mental
tug.

“Here now, don’t ye be taking liberties with
her, ye pervey nonce,” she said although her tone was more curious
than anything else as I made the same modifications.

“There, I loosened her up a bit,” I said with
a smirk.

“Ay, I’ll jest bet ye did.” She eyed me
suspiciously, but with a slight twitch of a smile. Within moments,
her doll was moving about the course and I quickly had a line of
witches looking for customization for their own dolls. My smartest
move was showing Michelle what I’d done and letting her help modify
plastic people.

Her first customer was Britta while the other
twin insisted that I handle her doll. Erika watched me carefully as
I loosened joints and added flex to her little Mini-me.

“You know, those body proportions are just
about accurate,” she said, leaning close… too close while I worked.
“At least for my sister and me. Not so much these other girls,” she
said archly. Then she took back her avatar and pivoted on one heel
to try out the new, improved version.

“Pretty cool, huh?” T.J. asked quietly,
watching the Amazonian witch walk away.

I glanced over at where the other kids, the
ones without telekinesis, were sitting and watching the action,
their simple construction chores done.

“Not what I envisioned, T.J.,” I said. “Not
at all.”

Chapter 16

Tuesday passed rather uneventfully, although
Caeco wasn’t too pleased that I gave Ryanne another ride back to
Arcane after English. But we were still on the buddy system and it
was
still January in Vermont. Waiting for me near the
entrance, my assassin girlfriend had simply raised her eyebrows
when the two of us had walked in and Ryanne had rather loudly
thanked me for the lift.

For most girls, that wouldn’t constitute much
of reaction, but for her, it said a lot. I’d have to find a tactful
way to avoid too much lift giving. My explanation that we were in
the same class only fueled the fire, so I asked about her day
instead.

Her workload was a buttload more than mine.
Oracle had arranged for some fake college credits to compensate for
her years of growing up in super-advanced biology and genetics
labs. The result was a heavy courseload of second-year classes and
their accompanying labs. I asked how the genetics class was going
and specifically how my DNA sample was doing.

“Waiting for the karyotype results. Probably
find out tomorrow, then I’ll accidentally spill some acid on the
sample. Just gotta get the project done and I’ll have my grade,”
she said, a trace of weariness in her voice.

She walked with me to my room, where I dumped
my stuff, then we walked down to dinner and met up with the rest of
our friends. After dinner, everyone separated to get started on
schoolwork before Gina’s seminar. We were all rapidly realizing how
much work came with college, and Arcane’s special programs took up
a ton of precious homework time.

Before too long, we were back in an Arcane
classroom once again.

“We ended the other night on a bit of a
scare. I’m happy to announce that I’ve met with representatives
from the Fey and received their assurances of your safety. Also,
the three missing children were located by the Sheriff’s
department, all safe and sound.

“However, this illustrates the additional
dangers faced by supernaturals, so I hope you all take your morning
survival classes seriously,” Gina said, her eyes ending on mine.
That pretty much instantly pissed me off. Jenks had obviously been
feeding Gina some crap about me and she was buying it. I spent much
of the class fuming. She talked more about the obvious things we
saw on the news daily. Chris and company were currently touring
Europe, cleaning up gate sites too tough or resistant for the
regular exorcist types. The media was having a field day following
their exploits. The discussion moved to some of the more extreme
religious groups that had formed, seemingly overnight, since
Halloween. Many preached complete intolerance toward supernaturals,
calling for laws to control them. Jael suggested that witches might
have protection under grounds of religious freedom, but another
kid, one of the telepaths, pointed out that witches had a gene or
three that gave them the ability to practice, which meant their
religion
wasn’t open to everyone. That prompted a discussion
about whether or not a religion had to accept everyone interested.
Someone pointed out that regular humans could still practice
witchcraft, they just wouldn’t be able to make anything happen. I
wasn’t participating and barely listening when Gina called me out
on it.

“What do you think, Declan?”

I had listened enough to know that she was
questioning my thoughts on witchcraft as a religion.

Reluctantly I answered. “I don’t think that
you have to be
skilled
at a religion to practice it. People
all over the world practice New Age or pagan-based religions
without a wit of power. And claiming a genetic difference for any
reason is a field day for lawyers,” I said.