The Awakening of Ren Crown (27 page)

The books circling my head had alarming titles.
Why Teenagers Look to the Dark, Straying from a Righteous Path, Dreams, Rare Mage Identification, Solving Problems in Unusual Ways, Lateral and Literal Thinking.

Dreams
looked at me hopefully, its pages rippling in a little hand clenched gesture, while maintaining a respectful distance.

“Maybe...maybe later, ok?” I muttered, feeling ridiculous.

It gave a little ripple of its pages and flew up to rest on a balcony above with a fleet of other books, watching and waiting. A black-and-white book perched there tilted toward me, its glittering but unreadable letters piercing me like eyes, as it regally wobbled next to
Dreams,
which sat straighter, then bowed its spine and rippled its pages.

Ok. I was officially disturbed. I waved my eraser stick. “The rest of you, get lost,” I told the still-circling tomes, a few of which exuded a far more predatory vibe than
Dreams
' polite request.

Straying from a Righteous Path
looked outraged, its spine stiff as it sailed off. The rest followed
Dreams
' path, though, and clustered around the black-and-white book to form a little papered powwow.

I secured the chin strap on my helmet more firmly. I could wonder about my sanity later—the whole experience of the magical was surreal, but felt too linear to be a dream.

It didn't matter. This existence held hope and I was grabbing it with two desperate hands.

Several dozen pedestals dotted the perimeter of the large one-room floor. On each pedestal a book was displayed, surrounded by either a glass case or a cage. Hanging from each was a ceremonial knife in a jeweled scabbard. A jet black cage drew my attention.

As I walked closer, I noted the binding was made from the skin of something striped black and forest green. The title read
The Twelve Black Steps
. There was a tangible dark allure to it. A little like Mr. Verisetti. Another encased book to the right read
Death Magic.
What would one of those books do if it got a hold of me? Suck out my soul for real?

“
Don't do it!”

“
I...reluctantly concur.”

Even Christian's mad alter ego was agreeing.

“I love him,” an unhelmeted girl cried, reaching for a pedestal to my right. A book titled “Lovesick” attached to the back of her head.

“No, stop.” The other girl—helmeted—manhandled her back from the pedestal, but didn't whack the book off her friend.

They struggled in a pseudo-wrestling stance. “I love him, and I know he only needs a little push to love me back.”

“You will get pegged by the Department for checking that out of its case,” the second girl hissed. “I'm not letting you.”

“I need him.” The girl extended a hand toward the hanging knife, still locked chest-to-chest with her friend.

“Getting Constantine Leandred to love you is not worth it. You'll be in the system forever. They check those mages first. They do an automatic check on you the moment you press your finger to the stone. No.” She pushed the other girl back two steps. “You are out of your mind anyway. Leandred is insanely vengeful. He'd turn you into a carrot, then feed you to a rabbit, if you didn't get the spell right, and he found out what you tried to do.”

“I'd get it right!”
Lovesick
left the back of her head and was replaced with
Delusions of Grandeur
.

I examined the knife. Could I use synthetic blood? Or did it have to be student blood? I thought about the Rosetta Stone episode that had given me the translation enchantment and enrolled me. Likely student blood.

I reluctantly moved away from the pedestal. Marsgrove had made too many references to the people in the Department being worse than he. Will had been freaked out by them too. I'd try Ganymede first, then figure out a way around the blood restriction, if that didn't work.

I wandered around, checking out the floor plan, which was similar to the libraries I was used to in the First Layer. The shelf inhabitants, however, were anything but normal.

There were very few mages on the fourth floor—maybe three dozen in total—and silencing enchantments either didn't seem to be an option here or weren't enforced. Two students at a humongous oak table were arguing loudly.

“I'm telling you, the Third Layer is going to sign the contingency tomorrow. They are backed into the corner on this one. No negotiating power.”

“Don't say that.” There was a note of warning in the other boy's voice.

“Oh, come on, they can't enter any of the major cities here without being noticed. There are too many patrols.”

“All it takes is one of the Ten Most Wanted mages to make an appearance—”

“Powerful, all ten, but in order to do the kind of grand scale damage needed—”

I ducked a book titled
The Joy of Flight
that was randomly doing spirals and loops, and approached a sea of wooden drawers that housed a simple card catalog system. There was no wall or computer system in sight. The fourth floor was technologically backward from the three floors below it and yet a hundred times more overtly magical.

There were helmets atop the cabinets with a sign that said to leave the catalog helmets in the catalog area. I could only imagine how easy a target someone looking through tiny drawers would be to a ravenous book. I rapped the top of my helmet—secure—then thumbed through the drawers in order to figure out the cataloging system and find what I was looking for.

A floor map was posted above the cabinets, and I found the designation that coincided with the map stacks. Ducking out, I walked briskly through the maze of bookshelves and, upon seeing my goal, increased my speed.

“Ack,” I gasped, as I crashed into something solid that emerged from the shelves on my right.

Strong hands clasped me, preventing me from falling, but my necromancy research notebook clattered to the floor, pages splayed open.

Ultramarine eyes filled my upward vision.

“Steady there.”

His hand reached down to retrieve my notebook, and I dove for it, knocking his hand to the side. I did a little somersault, whacking my helmet loudly on the parquet floor, and came up in a crouch with the open notebook pressed to my chest.

Alexander Dare's amazing eyes filled with surprise, then a brow quirked under dark brown hair which was neither long nor short. “Should I even ask?”

His voice was just as I remembered. Beautifully masculine, deep and edged. There was the slightest bit of humor there now. A book dove at him—
Strategy and Tactics
—and he flicked his fingers without looking, forcing it off its path and straight into a shelf. It crashed, shook its pages, and took off into the air again, then hid behind a shelf, peeking around as if plotting its next move against him. Unsurprisingly, Dare wasn't wearing a helmet.

“No.” I pressed my necromancy notebook against my chest more firmly. My actions screamed guilty.

He seemed to be waiting for me to say something more, but I could do nothing but stare at him. Visions of him utterly destroying people in the holograms with an easy flick of his fingers—just like the motion he had made with the book—looped through my head.

And yet, this was the boy who had healed me. Who had expressed his sorrow that he couldn't heal Christian. Who had given me that last moment.

My pulse pounded, my wrist itched fiercely under my cuff, and I was wearing a helmet.

He looked at me oddly. “You are the girl who had the trouble in the reading room. The one who tried to stun me.”

I just stared at him like some feral mute recently emerged from a jungle. Preservation instincts were overriding common sense. Luckily, they were also overriding the words that sprung to my lips—
I bet you stun people stupid a lot.

No. A thousand times no. I clenched my lips together, determined to keep them that way. I somewhat hoped a book would bean me in the face so I could just pass out and escape from my own awkwardness.

He touched his cuff, frowning, then rotated his wrist, shaking his right hand out. I followed the motion. I wondered what design lay beneath his cuff. An image of the bird and snake hybrid shot forward in my mind.

“Phoenix dragon,” I blurted.

“What?” he asked sharply.

I shook my head and clamped my lips together harder.

“Are...you ok?”

“No.” I was most decidedly not.

“Should I call the librarian?” he asked slowly. “Or help you walk to the stairs?”

I eked out another “No,” without saying anything more. It was close.

He watched me intently for several more seconds, and I wondered if he was going to call the librarian—or the men with white coats—after all, but he finally raised a brow and walked away.

My eyes followed him, body frozen until he turned the corner. I slumped against the wall. Wow. If there was a competition for worst communicator in history, I needed to enter.

Unsurprisingly, an adult appeared a minute later to see if all was well. My savior had obviously sent the librarian to check on the unstable girl in the stacks. My capacity to be completely mortified swelled.

After poorly reassuring the librarian that I was fine, I found the information I needed. The arch to Ganymede Circus was located on the twentieth circle, two up from the base of the mountain.

The circus was listed as a “protected area.” Highly magical and extremely volatile.

The city map showed the spoked streets of the circus converging into a center roundabout and gave me the location for the entrance arch that admitted mages from “academic institutions” as well as the location for Black Magicks Unlimited.

I just needed to figure out how to get around Marsgrove's manipulation in order to access an off-campus arch.

~*~

I met Will on the first floor, in the midst of the sea of packed tables. He was already seated. The inner light that had highlighted him earlier when I'd panicked in the cafeteria was still in place, making him easy to find. He drew his finger in a pattern on the table, and the voices around us dimmed.

“Rune for silencing fields,” he said. “They are standard around most parts of campus; you just have to activate them.”

I copied the shape into the general notebook I was keeping for everything not necromancy related and activated the sorting feature to move it into the “green” section, where I was keeping a task list of things to be researched. I included a note to get a book on runes as well.

Will and I chatted about fun and bizarre things—like books that attacked and how the caged ones did require student blood and were dangerous to unlock—until I managed to bring the conversation around to Will's port and travel research.

“So, if there is an arch that is blocked, how do you go about getting through it?” I asked casually. If I could avoid it, I didn't want to tell him that I was Marsgrove's prisoner and on campus illegally.

Will nearly vibrated in his seat as he explained information in one big spew, his hands motioning so hard that he knocked his glasses askew on his nose. He took a breath finally. “So, to sum up, you need to find an accelerator to move past it or another magic that will overwhelm or trick it.”

I gave him the “keep explaining” sign with my hand.

“Accelerators are difficult to obtain, and tricky to make, but once you have one, you tap the accelerant on the object, then let the magic do its work. Even better if you can make an accelerator box or spider. Device magic is the best—many mages like to pretend to be all otherworldly.” He waved his arms around in a mystical fashion. “Me, I acknowledge and celebrate the practicality and brilliance of toys.”

He gave his pockets a pat. “You insert the magic during a controlled lab setting, then don't have to worry about point focusing in the field. The tricky part is inserting the right magic. Like your magic paint. Definitely a powerful accelerant. I've been meaning to ask you about it. What kind of paint did you use? I want to buy some.”

I rubbed my hand along my neck. “I don't know.” I looked around. “I got it from...my teacher.”

“Ah.” Will put a small plain black device on the table between us. He looked around, then pressed the top. It lit red and he relaxed, but leaned forward. “Tiny bit of chaos magic—it will disrupt our conversation for anyone trying to eavesdrop past the silencing fields. Works for ten minutes. I did a little research on your teacher after I returned. He studied art here.”

That made sense—what with the mountain paintings and Marsgrove knowing him.

“I found an old school picture,” he continued. “He was standing between Dean Marsgrove and another guy. Chummy.”

Will looked like he was expecting me to take the news badly. I shook my head. “Marsgrove called him by first name a few times, so I'm not surprised. Speaking of which...” It was as good an opening as any. “If you could not mention me to Marsgrove at all, that would be great. I don't trust him.”

And if Will was ever in conversation with him, I didn't want my name dropped.

Will looked surprised, but said, “Sure. He's a big deal around here, but I only know him because of that research project. He was in charge of my pu—I mean, assignment.”

My eyes narrowed immediately. “He assigned you to that project?”

“Yup. Wanted me to look for magical technologies in the First Layer.” He shrugged. “It paralleled my own aims. Was what I got in tr—noticed for. I, ah, might have tweaked the parameters for my own purposes, though.”

I tapped my fingers, thinking hard. “So, the paint is an accelerant?”

“Definitely seemed to be. Special, though. I'd love to study it. I'm going to do some serious delving into art magic now. Good for conceptualization at the very least, especially if I can gain some rudimentary skill.”

I blinked at him and my mental brown paint bucket of “uncategorized” information immediately spit out an item. “Hey, there is an Art Expressionists meeting tomorrow. I have no clue what that is, but do you want to go with me? I'm not exactly signed up for classes yet. Middle of term and all.” I tucked my hair behind my ear. “And it might be informative?”

“Sure!”

I smiled at him and relaxed as he returned the grin. Maybe I wasn't the worst communicator in the world after all.