The Awakening of Ren Crown (19 page)

“
I like them,”
Christian said warmly.

“
Fly free, free, free!”
emerged high and tinny directly on its heels.

“Dragon Wednesdays are the best project the weather and tech mages have ever done together, frankly,” one student said to another as they walked by me.

“We'll see if you still think that the day one of the big guys decides to come play.”

A small dragon caught a flare of blue and shot upward. He executed a smooth backflip over a cloud, opened his jaws and roared. Blue flame pierced through an adjacent cloud, bursting it out in the middle, sucking around the edges, and flaring like a nuclear mushroom, then rained white and blue sparkles on the grass.

I looked at the immense expanse of grass and the people lounging and playing on it, unconcerned or tickled by the unnatural shower. They looked like normal college students, except for the jets of color that they too played with and released. One girl spun a ball of red into the shape of a cat with her hand. It bounded across the grass, then dissipated into the air in a projection of fire and light. Her skirt turned the color of the firecat, projected flames licking down from it.

I hunched against the pillar, feeling completely exposed—a mouse in the middle of a swarm of hawks. At the far end of the grass circle were a bunch of guys playing a rugby-esque sport, propelling a ball by magic. Colors formed a comet tail as the ball was passed or kicked. A guy raced down the field toward me with one arm outstretched overhead, and made a fantastic one-handed catch, hauling the ball to his chest. He turned, backing up a few steps as he taunted the guys down the field. Christian would have immediately recruited him.

My feet started toward him. I stopped abruptly, troubled, as a group walked between us. The tug to walk to him was almost overpowering. Disturbing. He turned suddenly, brows creasing as he searched the groups of people streaming out of the cafeteria and onto the walk, and I forgot how to breathe as he suddenly seemed to zoom into view and my eyes met ultramarine blue for a moment.

Another large group of girls walked between us, breaking the unnatural zoom and eye contact. The view of him was imprinted in my mind, though. He was dark, athletic, and wind-blown, sporting the echo of the smirking smile he had worn upon making the catch—the kind that appeared only on the faces of guys who were totally convinced of their own skill.

I took another step, then cursed and stopped. I pushed against the overwhelming urge to walk to him.

His smirk slipped fully into a frown, he turned, and threw the ball. A loooong way. He had to have used magic, but I couldn't see any tendrils as I had with the others. He ran back into the thick of the pack and a number of the guys rallied around him.

I couldn't see the color of his eyes anymore, but that shade had been haunting me for weeks.

I tried to concentrate on the other players and to still my traitorous feet as I shakily walked past, hugging the edge of the path, and trying to think of other things over the sound of the blood pounding in my ears. Christian would assuredly want to try this sport after I got him ba—

A boy screamed, holding his throat, then leaned forward and projectile vomited blood all over the field. Spells flew, and players took hits hard enough to cause someone to wake up three days later, drooling. I skirted the steps and picked up my pace, but couldn't prevent a last look at Alexander Dare, who was standing with his arms crossed at the edge of the pile-up, looking down at the bodies and blood in amusement.

I felt curiously blank. I wondered if this was what people meant when they mentioned culture shock.

~*~

I took the long way back to the dorm, eschewing magical travel, walking down the circular levels. By the fourth circle I was sweating profusely and willing my feet to move faster, like the lady in the Administration Building had. Nothing happened. I concentrated harder. Rose petals peeling, rose petals peeling. Nothing. I sucked at being a mage. Rose petals!
Rose petals!

A hole opened up in the middle of the air with a loud boom and my shoe exploded from my foot. The shoe sailed right through, a perfect goal, then the hole closed with another boom.

I had just blown my shoe from existence.

As people strode nonchalantly by, I stood motionless, contemplating nihilism, then began to hobble back to Dormitory Circle with one bedraggled left shoe and three holes in the sock on my shoeless right, ignoring everything around me. I tried to make myself feel better by imagining my shoe balancing on top of an electrical line somewhere in First Layer Kalamazoo.

Limping over the stone walk leading down to the fifth circle steps, I tried not to make eye contact with anyone. As I stopped to dislodge pebbles from my sock, my eyes traveled past a storefront sign that read “Magi Mart.”

Olivia had all of those foodstuffs labeled with the name. My stomach rumbled.

I shuffled inside hoping they didn't have a “no shirt, no shoes, no service” policy, otherwise I was going to have to argue the merits of one shoe and one sock.

The store was tiny. She had gotten all that stuff here? I could see a box of Cheerio-looking cereal on the shelf. Safe. Weird, though, that there was only one. In fact, there was exactly one of
every
product on the shelves. I reached up to get the nice, safe box of non-Cheeri—

“Ow!” I rubbed my arm where I had been zapped.

“Don't touch the displays,” a bored, half-dead voice said. Likely to match the bored, half-dead guy at the counter up front.

Great. So I was supposed to magic the box or something? I'd probably blow the store off the face of the mountain. I carefully considered my hunger needs versus the guilt of mass destruction. It was close, and hunger was starting to edge ahead.

A dead sigh emerged from behind the counter. “Press the button and the product will appear in your basket.”

I looked around for a basket.

Nothing.

I switched my thinking around, looking for a basket that wasn't really a basket. Just like my desk was really a super-transformer.

My eye caught on a stack of cards on a ledge near the window. The cards were printed with the image of a wicker basket. I picked one up and examined it. It glowed briefly, then returned to its brown hue. I looked back at the display and carefully pressed the button under the cereal. A frisson of energy went through me and down my fingertips into the card. I looked at the card to see my previously empty basket had a rectangular yellow box placed neatly inside. I stared at it. The image zoomed up to hologram above the card in all its bright yellow glory. My fingers promptly released the card, and it dropped to the floor.

I looked around and hurriedly picked up the card. Damn magic-startle-reflex.

I started populating all sorts of things—way more than I actually needed for the night, but it was fascinating to feel and then watch the items appear. And...I had no idea how to remove one—pushing the button again simply populated my basket with one more of the item—so I ended up with a basket so overcrowded that I imagined my card was starting to bend.

I took my card up to the register. “So, uh, how do I get the items out?”

Dead sigh. God, up close, the guy even looked like a zombie. “Place it in the slot in your room's delivery box then tell it to appear.”

“Ok. Thanks.” That made me a little nervous. My eye caught a display of a pen and pencil and my pulse jumped. The pencil was labeled “Layer 2 Pencil.” “Is that a magic pencil?”

The guy stared at me. “Yes. Munits or credit?”

I quickly populated the card with three pencils and three pens. “Munits?”

Dead sigh. “Magic units. That will be twenty-five even.”

From my pocket, I withdrew a few soggy bills from Marsgrove's roll.

Dead guy looked at me as if I were both gross and an idiot, then gingerly handed a bill back. I kind of wanted to ask him if he or his family could give me any tips on raising the dead, but kept my lips shut and put the card in my pocket and took my change.

I didn't know if the card or delivery box included refrigeration, so I hurried back to the dorm, quickly picked the lock, thankful Olivia was still gone. I stuck the card in, excited, and throwing my hands out like Magical Moses, I told my groceries to appear.

And appear they did—exploding into a hodge-podge of mush, mash, goo and pulp all over the ceiling, walls, and floor.

Immediately, a little self-cleaning device in my desk whirled out and got to business. I heard the trash can next to my desk flush.

I rounded up the food products that had survived and quickly ate a completely normal tasting burrito. After crumpling up the paper and wiping my hands, I sighed, then fished out some cleaning products from the bathroom and got to work on the surfaces that hadn’t been cleaned. Magic kind of sucked.

Knock, knock, knock.

I put down the spray bottle and carefully pulled the door open an inch.

A good-looking, uniformed guy with smooth, dark skin and closely-cropped hair stood on the other side. He had a royal-blue tablet similar to Will's violet one.

“Florence Crown?” He had a nice deep voice and a trustworthy vibe, but
he knew my name
.

“No, thanks. I'm full-up on candy and magazines.” I started to close the door, but his foot wedged between it and the jamb.

He pointed his tablet at me through the space, and his deep voice took on an edge. “You are making this worse on yourself, Miss Crown. You just performed a Level One Offense. You either open this door fully or my tablet will vaporize you.”

I opened it quickly. I had seen both Will's and Marsgrove's tablets do some freaky things.

He pulled the tablet back and clicked a few things on the screen. “Just kidding about the vaporization. Squad joke. But blowing up groceries is prohibited, as the delivery mechanism can react in a volatile way, so I'll have to punish you with impunity.”

My heart leaped into my throat.

He smiled. “I'm just kidding. This is a first offense, and let's keep it that way. Be a good citizen, Miss Crown, or else. Do you run?”

I couldn't tell if he was completely serious or having me on. He stood between me and partial freedom, so I decided to treat him as serious. “Yes?”

“Great. Were you headed anywhere soon?”

“The library?” That seemed a safe destination—populated and normal.

“Good. Run to one of the libraries and run back.” His tablet dinged. He smiled. I tried to smile back, mentally tightening the straps on my pack. I had just been tagged. How long did I have before Marsgrove found me now? The boy gave me an encouraging look. “You say, 'I will run to a library and back, by my magic I so do vow.'”

I repeated the phrase, plotting out my next move. Something wrapped around me, squeezing briefly just like in the administration building and when I'd first entered the dorm room. Magic testing and settling.

“Great. Make sure you do so or you will regret it. Have a nice day!”

I nodded quickly as he turned and walked back down the hall, tapping his tablet. I shut the door, threw everything except my bed linens and toothbrush into Marsgrove's paper, and ran outside. Standing at the front of the building, a pressure started to build in me. A painful cramp made me bend over briefly. I was hoping this was the punishment magic instead of Marsgrove doing something freaky to me from somewhere. Another cramp rolled over me.

I concentrated on the travel map and willed my magic to pinpoint my location and take me to the library by the fastest route possible. It snapped into place, like a freaky paper GPS.

I started running, following the dotted path on the page.

I knocked over a trash can, then stopped to right it—full body cramp.

Climbed a wall—too slowly—zap, zap, zap.

Bounded two fences with limited liabilities but had to dodge bushes that reached out to ensnare my shirt, which slowed me down—double cramp.

Ran through the middle of a practice field—got yelled at—social pain only.

Overturned another garbage can—left it. Guiltily circled back around to pick it up—light zap.

When I experienced remorse, the pain lessened. Interesting, but irrelevant in my current panic.

I vaulted the last impediment, and brushed a banana peel from my leg in disgust as I ran to the giant steel building in front of me. It reminded me a little of the mechanical spider I had seen walking in the Depot—all slim silver limbs crossing, beams supporting each other in diagonal and crosshatched fashion. I checked the map one last time to make sure I had the right place and breathed a sigh of relief.

Opting for the “fastest” way had obviously been the wrong thing to ask. Being a feral mage kind of sucked. I should have asked the map for the “best” way to reach the library.

I'm sure this was another one of those training things that normal mages were taught from birth—or at least for the two to three years at prep school—how to ask questions of and to magical objects and creatures. Visions of genies and lamps and frogs and sphinxes combined with dire warnings and consequences in my mind. Who knew what Aladdin might have become in this stinking world? And that frog prince? Probably a total bum.

The library building was...enormous. My skin tingled as I ran over a stone seal embedded into the walkway. A sign on the door shimmered, then read, “No chaos magic may be performed on textbooks under any condition—up to a Level Four Offense.”

I slowed down—no zap, no cramp, no pain. I leaned over, resting my hands on my knees as I surreptitiously looked around. I couldn't see Marsgrove.

My punishment seemed to be fulfilled by crossing the seal so close to the entrance. I could run somewhere else on the mountain now, and keep running, or I could enter a place overflowing with knowledge and try to figure out how to free myself.

I slipped in behind a group of mages.

A sea of desks, support beams, and open staircases spread before me. In contrast to my emotion, the space was brightly lit and optimistic; the lighting almost jaunty. Across the space, mages were flipping through books and taking notes by hand or with wands and small scepters, circling hands and cursive loops over papers, and plugging cards into readers similar to Delia's. Some desks were pushed together and people were animatedly talking to each other, yet quiet stretched over the whole room. Obviously an enchantment of some kind.