The Thief (29 page)

“
It’s hard to know what
‘enough’ is when you have nothing to compare your situation to,” I
said, gaze on the pale blue countertop.

After a moment, she pushed a jar of
chocolate chip cookies into my view.

“
I’ve never thought about it
that way,” Bea said, serious.

I looked up at her gratefully. I took a bite
of one, chewing thoughtfully. “So you know a lot,” I asked slowly,
“about Mirrormakers?”

Her eyebrows raised. “Just the one.”

“
What was he
like?”

Her expression was empty, eyes on the box.
“Distant,” she said at last. “Why do you ask?”

“
Well, I’ve heard a few
things about the Ryans as a family that makes them
sound...”

“
Unpleasant?” she smiled
wryly.

“
But Soren
wasn’t?”

“
He was a very frustrating
man,” she admitted. “But he meant well. He just didn’t have as much
control over his life as he did over mirrors.”

I could have told her everything about Rhys
right then, but still I held back. “So you think difficult people
are worth the effort?”

“
Depends,” she
said.

“
On what?”

“
On whether they have a good
reason for being difficult,” she said, reaching for a
cookie.

Chapter 16

Jul

On Monday, I ended up behind Rhys in line
for lunch. He didn't even glance at me, expression flat as he
stiffly reached for a tray with a sandwich. He'd strictly kept to
the pretense that we had no contact beyond school, ignoring me even
more completely than he had before. And it was starting to tick me
off.

"Can you hand me a spoon?" I asked him.

He flicked me a glance that
read,
Seriously?
and moved on to the drink station.

Ire rankled. I didn't care
if he
was
some
magic prince, it didn't give him a right to be this rude.
Especially after all the research I'd done for him in the Tower
yesterday. I'd stopped in for a few hours in the afternoon, before
Bea got home from work. I hadn't found anything instructive yet,
but there had been a list of different kinds of magic mirrors in
one that was worth mentioning. Business arrangement or not, it
wouldn't kill him to show a little gratitude.

I moved along in line to stand next to him
at the drink station. "I left you a book on the library table," I
murmured, and his hand hesitated, reaching for a bottle of water.
"It had a section that - "

"Shut up," he said under his breath. "What
did I tell you?"

"That you would find interesting," I
finished, blinking innocently. "The end. What did you think I was
going to say?"

"I told you, we're not friends," he frowned
at me.

"That's the face. We were talking about
chemistry and you were scary," I said, backing away with my tray,
faking timidity.

His expression went slightly bewildered and
I managed not to smirk as I crossed the room to where Camille sat
eating thick noodles out of a soup bowl with chopsticks. I sat down
next to her with my tray. She'd recommended it, so I'd gotten the
same thing she had, something called ‘kitsune udon.’

"Ok, how do you pronounce this?" I asked
her. "I know udon is noodles, but what's the first part mean?"

"Kit-soo-neh," she said, accenting the first
syllable. She pointed at the big triangles floating in the broth.
"Kitsune is fox. See the fox ears?"

"Well now I don't want to eat them!" I
exclaimed.

"It's tofu, tofu!" she chided.

"I know, that's what I get for asking.
They're too cute now."

Camille shrugged and reached for mine with
her chopsticks. I hurriedly covered my bowl with my hand. "I was
kidding!" I laughed. "Eat your own lunch!"

“
Ladies, it’s hot wings
day!” Mac announced, setting his tray down triumphantly. Then he
looked in shock at mine and Camille’s plates. “Did you forget your
hot wings? Where are your hot wings?”

“
You should say hot wings
some more times,” Destin said, sliding calmly into the last open
seat.

“
Still a vegetarian,” I
reminded him.

“
Still makes no sense to
me,” Mac said.

Camille eyed Mac’s plate dubiously.

“
What?” Mac wanted to
know.

“
Chicken wings?” she
asked.

“
Well yeah.”

“
They’re orange,” was her
only comment, and she shifted her attention to her
sandwich.

“
Wait a minute,” Mac said
slowly. “You’re not...are you saying...that you’ve never had hot
wings before?”

“
No.”

“
No...you’ve had them, or
no, you haven’t had them?”

She blinked, looked at me, then back at Mac.
“Both of those are ‘no’?”

“
Focus, woman, this is
important! Have you ever eaten hot wings?”

“
I have not,” she said
cautiously.

“
That’s insane!” Mac
exclaimed, earning him some looks from nearby tables. He
immediately pushed his plate at Camille. “Here! Eat these right
now! My generosity knows no bounds.”

Camille looked baffled, but she reached for
the plate anyway. Mac snatched it back suddenly. “Never mind, my
generosity does have bounds. I forgot I was really hungry.” Then he
frowned. “You’re serious? Never?”

Camille shrugged.

Slowly, like it pained him, he edged his
plate forward again. “Ok, you can have one. One! I’m seriously
starving, but I can’t let you go on living life without hot
wings.”

“
You sure you’re not going
to take it back?” I asked.

“
Quick, take it before I
change my mind!” he said.

Camille shrugged again and reached for her
fork.

“
Put that down!” Mac
ordered, aghast. “You really weren’t kidding! No, you eat them with
your hands.”

“
It’s covered in sauce,”
Camille frowned.

“
That’s half the point!” Mac
insisted. “It’s like ribs, if you don’t have sauce all over your
hands and face when you’re done eating them, you’re doing it
wrong.”

“
I don’t know, I’ve seen
people eat them with only getting like two fingers dirty,” I
offered.

“
They’re doing it wrong,”
Mac stated flatly.

Camille picked up a chicken wing with two
fingers, looking at the bright orange sauce dubiously.

“
Ok now,” Mac instructed,
reclaiming his plate and digging into his wings in earnest, “Now
you eat everything that’s not bones. You’re welcome.”

“
I like buffalo sauce but
wings look like they’d be really hard to eat,” I said, dipping into
my soup.

“
You’re missing the point,”
Mac said with his mouth full. “If you’re not going to destroy the
wings, you might as well just get boneless.” Beside him, Destin
made a show of eating one of his boneless nuggets. “You don’t think
about it as difficult, you think about it as
awesome
. And then it doesn’t seem
difficult anymore.”

“
That would sound more
profound if you didn’t have sauce all over your face,” Destin
said.

Meanwhile, Camille had wiped her hands with
several napkins and was standing up.

“
Aw come on, you seriously
didn’t like it?” Mac complained.

“
I’m going to get more,”
Camille said gruffly, and took her tray back to the lunch
counter.

“
Alright, maybe she’s ok,”
Mac admitted, in her absence.

My gaze wandered across the cafeteria to
where Rhys sat with Kei, Hayley, and Amity. Hayley was chattering
away at Amity and tugged on Kei's sleeve, demanding something or
other. Rhys was buried in a book, ignoring them completely. Kei
leaned over and tried to read over his shoulder, and Rhys snapped
the book shut, giving him a genuine glare. It wasn't the same look
of blanket disdain he gave everyone else - there was real loathing
there. I remembered Rhys saying that Kei was his bodyguard. What
would make him despise him like that? Why did Rhys even stay around
the others when it was so obvious he'd rather be alone?

Kei looked up and met my gaze from across
the room and he winked, like he'd done on the first day. I looked
away quickly, but I didn't feel any of the thrill I had before.
Between the way he'd appeared and vanished so suddenly outside the
empty lab, and the look Rhys gave him - not to mention what he'd
done to my mother's journal - he was beginning to make me nervous
for non-romantic reasons.

That night, I couldn't sleep, so I snuck out
of the house and went to the orchard mirror. I found the Tower
mercifully empty. It was the middle of the night, after all. I
didn’t expect Rhys to be here, and I wasn’t sure I had the energy
to deal with him tonight. A thick tome lay on the table, and I
moved closer to inspect it. Rhys must have left it out, forgotten
to re-shelve it.

The book had a faded red
cloth cover, with gold embossing that had all but worn off.
Encyclopaedia of Spellcraft, third
edition.
Thinking this looked promising, I
opened the cover.
Property of the Runesong
Monastery
was stamped inside. I found that
curious. Did that mean someone had stolen it and brought it here,
or had a Mirrormaker created it from memory? I scanned down the
table of contents, thinking I should look for something to do with
iron swords. I tried not to get distracted by the other intriguing
subjects - Uses for Feral Blood; Alchemy and other Human
Spellcraft; Immortals in Folklore; Dragons Through the Ages; Baking
with Magic; and then, towards the bottom of the page:

The Magical Properties of
Iron,
I read.
Now
we're getting somewhere.
This could be
useful in helping Camille. I thumbed to the page, spread the book
on the table and read eagerly:

Iron is the most magic-friendly of all the
metals. It readily takes to spells, seeming to make it a logical
choice for enchanting. However, it is not often used, because of
its capacity to take in more than is intended. A greedy metal, iron
is entirely avoided by the fae, who despise its tendency to draw
their magic out of them against their will, with unpredictable
results. For this reason, they apply their enchantments to wood, or
metals more difficult to spell, such as gold and silver. Iron is
particularly harmful to dryads, whose powers are derived from the
earth and plant life. Iron can be used to bar their connection to
the earth and its flora, rendering them powerless. See chapter 12
for more information on dryads and other hybrids.

Unenchanted iron can be used by ferals or
humans, but once enchanted, iron can only be wielded by a human,
lest there be unexpected side effects. Though ferals (like humans)
cannot perform magic, volatile magic will react to them, because of
the magical properties of their blood. For more information on
feral blood, see chapter 8.

Note: Enchanted iron may be reforged without
losing its enchantment.

Iron can also be used as a portaling medium
for imps. For more information on creatures from Below, see chapter
14.

Famous enchanted iron artifacts:

The Crown of Angwar
- worn by the monarchs of the human kingdom of
Angwar. Intended to prevent any non-human from succeeding the
throne. It will permanently absorb the powers of any non-human who
wears it. Following the invasion and takeover of Angwar by the fae
Ryan dynasty, the crown was lost.

The Grey Ward
- shield used by the warrior priestess Theodora
Vogel in the War of Temples. Capable of absorbing incoming spells,
and reflecting them back at attackers. Often credited as the sole
reason the Vogels won the Battle of Waycross. The shield resides at
the Runesong Monastery.

The Wand of Willard the
Mad
- iron wand employed by the fae Willard
Bloom. Known to be one of the most volatile artifacts in existence,
and has never been successfully bent to a user's will. It is
unknown whether using the wand drove Bloom insane or whether he was
already before he forged it. The wand is on display at the Museum
of Curiosities in Matoba.

The Tailor's Sword
- imbued with the ancient power of the human
Tailor family, this sword was forged to kill immortals by severing
their soul from their body. Taken across the mirror when the
Tailors fled the Inquisition.

"I hadn't finished reading that," Rhys said,
over my shoulder, and I jumped. I hadn't heard him come in - I must
have been pretty intent on the book.

"Then you should have left a bookmark or
something," I said, feeling my face warm.

"What's your interest in iron?" he asked,
leaning over the back of the couch to see the contents of the
page.

I hadn't told him about the sword. Camille
might not want me sharing that information - I got the impression
she didn't like him very much.

"Looking for ways to weaken fae?" he said,
tone becoming suspicious at my hesitation.

"I think there's an imp at the school," I
said quickly. "I wanted to know how it's been getting around."

"Did you lose something to it, too?" he
sighed, setting his backpack down on the table.  "I'm about to
buy Hayley a new bracelet, just so she'll shut up about the old
one."