The Awakening of Ren Crown (33 page)

And I was going to hold off on the lavender paint for a bit—until I got a firm bead on Christian's soul. Seeing a figment of my brother had messed with my head.

I needed safe, magical charcoal.

Will was nearly bouncing in his seat. “Let's see if we can get more information on which product does what during the meeting, then go after.” He nudged me in the side. “Maybe they'll have good paint.”

I clutched my pack harder, feeling for the edge of the tube inside in reassurance.

I forced myself to look around. There were student displays and written materials around the edges of the room. Like in the art shop, pictures and images moved in swirls of paint or in the harsher marks of charcoal.

The emcee took the stage and did a fancy swirl in the air with a paintbrush, producing a red dragon that dripped and dissipated. “Welcome folks! Looks like our timing was right in line with the world's. Excitement! Instead of our regular weekly workshop, we have our biannual auction tonight!”

That explained the little paddles. Will groaned and slumped in his seat. “That sucks.”

I nudged him. “We can come back next week.” If we weren't going to learn anything, I had a million other things to do—looking up wards and special areas of campus, most specifically.

“Yeah,” he said morosely. “But let's give it ten minutes, just in case.”

The emcee clapped his hands. “We have our normal displays, informative brochures, and material purchases located in the booths around the room. During break, take some time to browse around and see what your fellow art mages are up to. Never know, after today's events, you might be looking at the work of a future Kinsky.”

A number of mages rolled their eyes, though some sat forward in their seats.

“But first, padded door prizes!”

There was some snickering and the emcee smiled broadly. “We'll have another round of door prizes at the end too. Just by entering this room, one ticket was deposited for you in each bucket, but to increase your odds, you may purchase additional tickets, and tonight folks, we have some wild raffles. Six professors have volunteered a small session of their time. One on one with the professors, folks. Don't wait for the auction portion—the professors go for thousands of munits each. You can increase your chances for the door prizes by buying more tickets until each container is drawn.”

Hundreds of little yellow tickets flew from the seats and settled into different containers.

“Great. Let's begin!”

Five professors were prized off in quick succession. They were the adults who had been in the group near the entrance. I took notes on their titles and the information the emcee gave on each. If I could audit larger classes—sitting in without signing up—I could learn without being tracked. I’d go through the class schedule tonight.

“And now here's a real treat, folks, Professor Stevens, master professor of chemistry, materials, and chem-creations has just offered to be part of the door prize raffle. Folks, this is the big time. Professor Stevens rarely takes on personal students, and her sessions go for a fortune at auction, but she is offering a thirty minute session on constructing anything you fancy—legally, of course—to one lucky door prize winner!”

Laughter ensued at the mention of the legality clause and a flurry of tickets flew into her glass globe. It was far fuller than any of the other containers had been. Surprisingly, Will shot five magic tickets into it.

He shrugged at my questioning look. “Worth it. If you aren't majoring in one of her fields, you go through her assistants, and her seminars are always fully booked. I could get all kinds of questions answered.” He rubbed his hands together.

A last ticket from the audience wobbled, then settled inside.

The student emcee bowed and waved his hand toward the globe. “Professor Stevens, please draw the lucky mage's slip.”

To my surprise, the woman with the marvelous cheekbones stepped forward, pinched and regal, and her hand dipped inside. Two students to the side of me leaned forward, hands clasped together. Even Will looked excited as the professor pulled out the slip of paper and handed it to the emcee.

Professor Stevens must have practiced a penetrating stare designed to make everyone in the room feel as if she were dissecting them, because I felt like she was staring right at me and holding a scalpel.

“And the winner is...Florence Crown!”

~*~

I stood in front of the frosted glass door and tried to breathe normally. So much for not being noticed. My name had been yelled out and the ticket had zoomed into my hand, urging me forward, seeking to fulfill a contract.

I looked at Will, who stood at the end of the corridor holding his purchases and free product samples. He gave me an excited wave. The ticket tugged. I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

“Enter,” a voice said sharply.

I walked just over the threshold and could feel a magical net settle around me, poking, looking for weaknesses. The woman on the other side of the room was looking at a device she was holding.

“Well, come in and shut the door,” she said, just as sharply. I shot another quick look at Will, then moved forward with reluctance.

Click, click, click
. Professor Stevens was a thirty-something, tall blonde with impossibly spiked heels, cheekbones that could cut glass, and a hairdo just this side of severe. The severity was echoed in every clipped stride. However, when she turned her head to look at something to her left, I could see the wisps of hair at her neck seeking escape. She was like a beautiful and dangerous natural creation by Constable—a veneer of painted perfection underscored by wildness. Thunderstorm clouds caged and leashed only by strict control. Perhaps Constable had known someone like Professor Stevens, and the mixed medium of weather was a representation of that woman.

She stopped in front of me. A very complicated series of emotions crossed her face and were reflected in the pinching of her eyes and a working of the muscles of her cheeks. Her eyes narrowed upon the top of my head.

“I'm, um, Ren Crown,” I said, when she continued to just look at me as if she were deciding how to dispose of my body. “I won your raffle, and they told me to come here.” I finished the sentence awkwardly.

Her hands reached out, quick as lightning and one set of fingers wrapped around my cuff, the other pressed against my forehead. Her device hovered freely in the air. “Where did you get that shield set?”

I froze, terrified, but was compelled to answer. “Dean Marsgrove placed the shields on me.” One thing was very clear—I was ingesting the anti-dust Mr. Verisetti had given me as soon as I was out of here, and to hell with the consequences.

“Why?”

“It was a trade for a task I performed.” Truth, though not full disclosure. I had put on the limiting cuff in partial exchange for the shield set.

“Who are you allied with?”

“The Crown family, Will Tasky, and Alexander Dare.” Wait, what? Where had that last one come from? My magic felt as if we were allied?

“No one else?”

“No.” Thank God, thank God, thank God, no “Raphael Verisetti” emerged.

“What kind of mage are you?”

“A feral one?”

She let go, and I quickly stepped backward, keeping her in view, hands raised in front of me.

She turned and walked to the desk. “You are dismissed,” she said, waving me away.

My flight response paused at her dismissal. “Why did you just do that?” My breath was coming too quickly, catching on the words.

“Dismissed,” she enunciated, picking up a bag.

“Are you going to turn me in?”

“Have you done something that I should turn you in for?” she asked briskly, walking toward the door without looking at me, obviously intent on leaving. Her dismissal assuaged my panic more than anything else could have.

I looked at the ticket, which had tugged me here, then squared my shoulders. “I want my thirty minutes. The one where my questions get answered. Or aren't you bound by the raffle terms?” Magic seemed to hold people accountable.

She stopped abruptly, her eyes narrowing. “You want your
winning
session?”

“Yes.” Obviously, my winning had not been luck. I needed to be careful and smart about this, but I also couldn't deny the opportunity in front of me. Mr. Verisetti's words ran through my head.
Some professors will be able to override the restriction.

I had always let Christian be the daring one, but since that fateful night, my life had turned into one peril after another and it was up to me to either fold or break down the walls. Grab the opportunity, take the risk.

“I want you to show me paint making techniques. I want to know how to make magical charcoal. I want to know what makes one tube of paint do wondrous things while another produces lackluster results.”

“You can find those answers in a textbook.”

I could feel Guard Rock pacing at the bottom of my bag. Activated with paint that could make things live. What kind of materials might this woman who was so revered by the students be able to teach me to make?

“I want to know how to make exceptional charcoal and
extraordinary
paint.” I wanted to know why she cared about my shield set.

Stevens’s eyes narrowed further, and her eyes once more went to the top of my head. “Be at the art vault at sharp Libra Falling tomorrow.” She turned sharply, her heels clicking. “If you are one second late, the session will be void.”

She opened the door and strode through. Will's encyclopedia beeped that Libra Falling meant ten in the morning, and that falling numbers indicated the right side of the clock as the hand fell toward the bottom. I took a few moments to compose myself—the elation caused by the thought that I might finally be able to use paint was tempered by abject terror of discovery. I walked out to see Will examining his bounty in the hall.

He looked up. “Hey, how did it go?”

“Fine.” Terribly fine, possibly with the edge to the terrible part. “I’m meeting with her tomorrow. What's with the zodiac timekeeping, by the way?”

“Oh. That's right, the base translation enchantment doesn't include timekeeping. So you hear what people actually say. There’s an update that allows you to choose how you hear things—Capricorn Rising, one p.m., thirteen hundred, etc. The update makes it so you don't have to spend time mentally looking stuff up—the translation magic does it for you. Lots of First Layer born students use it. You can also change how you interpret names and slang. Many people have crazy names here, but the standard translation enchantment normalizes them to something you are accustomed to hearing and allows you to pronounce the name back without you even hearing yourself say something different. Sometimes it's pretty fun to remove that tweak. Want me to transfer my tweaks to you?”

“What does that involve?”

“I just spell my own translator to you. Like an update. But it has to go into your magical subconscious because it takes too much energy and time to do it on the conscious level each time. You'll never get the translations in time to participate in conversations if it's kept in an external device—like in your leather bracelet. But I can port it
through
your cuff so that your magic can check it out first—make sure it is virus free and safe—before it is absorbed.”

I looked down at the cursed flexible metal band. I trusted Will. But I think I had hit my magical threat quota for the day. “Maybe...later. Your encyclopedia is awesome, by the way. Thanks for that.”

“Sure!” He beamed. “Do you want to go to the library to check out our loot? I want to hear about Stevens.”

“Well, the interesting thing about that...”

~*~

Will and I spent two hours in the library as mages gossiped silently around us. The atmosphere on campus had split into two camps—one of continued loose whimsy and the other of focused paranoia. The latter was extremely unnerving. I felt gazes land repeatedly on me. I hoped it was just
my
paranoia that made my skin crawl.

Will was busy looking for information on the port situation in Ganymede Circus. Luckily, that meant he kept a rolling news feed going. My name and face hadn't made the news yet, so I was hopeful.

“
Stop hanging out with him, Ren.”

“
Suck out his soul!”

Christian's disapproval was about as useful as his psychosis, so I muttered, “How about you tell me how to get you out here instead?”

Silence from sane Christian.
“I told you, suck out his soul!”
from insane Christian.

Used to doing things on my own, it took me a few minutes of mental debate before I passed Will the anti-dust packet Mr. Verisetti had given me. Will, hungry for all knowledge and discourse, didn't bat an eyelash when I told him what it was supposed to be and asked if he would check it out.

“Yes! Absolutely. Awesome.”

“Just be careful. I...received it...from a suspicious person.”

Will nodded and I let him infer that it had come through the mail system.

I excused myself while Will was inspecting the substance and headed to the fourth to research soul separation and soul bonding techniques. With a helmet firmly in place, I batted away the book
The Psychology of Criminal
Accessories
. Thank God nobody was around to pay attention to the title—Dare most especially.

But the imposing black-and-white book I had seen on my first visit—whose title I still didn't know—sat atop the upper railing watching me intently.

I struggled with a few other books, until a prick of blood from a paper cut made one settle down. It wasn't one of the caged books, but I was still unnerved. The damage was done, so I flipped through it. I had paint now. And depending on what happened with Stevens, I could possibly obtain other resources. Once I figured out the correct dimensional space, the soul bonding ritual aspects, and how to make a body, I would be all set to pull Christian out.

I felt pretty confident in my dimensional drawing and conceptualization abilities—I was just going to have to tweak them until I found the ones that worked best for holding Christian—so I focused my search on bonding and securing a soul. When I eventually pulled Christian through, I wanted to make sure I got the sane one, and not the psychotic doppelganger. In order to achieve that, it looked like I needed to perform purification and container rituals to secure him properly.