Bloodrage - Helen Harper Page 0,14

Sorry.” I licked my lips and composed myself. “Are you…” I glanced downwards from the creature’s face for a moment, feeling my cheeks warm ever so slightly. Definitely not a Miss Slim, then. “…Mr. Slim?”

The small creature growled at me. “Of fecking course, I am. You’ll be that fecking hairless trouble-maker then, I suppose? This area is completely out of bounds to you. You are only allowed on the ground floor.” He fixed me with a beady eyed glare as if daring me to argue. “Dean’s orders.”

“I was looking for you,” I hastily protested, most definitely not wanting to create yet another enemy for myself. I may have been somewhat tardy with that wish, however, because Slim wheeled round in the air with a large snort and flapped off back down towards the staircase, clearly expecting me to follow him.

I sighed and followed the little creature as he continued to snort and mutter to himself. I only caught a few snatches of words, but the general gist appeared to be along the lines of ‘why the feck had he been lumbered with educating a great oaf like me’. I supposed that at least I’d finally met someone today, outside of Mary, who wasn’t terrified of getting on my bad side.

When we got back down to the ground floor, he led me to a desk area in one of the corners. There was a pile of about ten books, lying next to a pad and a pencil. Slim jerked his head towards them.

“There are your fecking books. Read them. Here. Then there’s a test.” He brushed some imaginary dust off his shoulder with a clawed hand. “Don’t touch anything else. You are not permitted to take any books out of this room. And don’t fecking bother me.” He sniffed and then fluttered off until I lost him in among some of the stacks.

I turned and looked down at the books, feeling a twist of regret that I apparently wasn’t to be given more freedom to explore the library in more depth. Still, reading a few books had to be easier than staring at a stone for two hours or trying to summon a sprite. I pulled out the chair and sat heavily down on it, picking up the pencil and running my hand over my naked skull. No problem.

*

Several hours later, my brain was swimming. The language in the books was virtually archaic. Facts and figures merged together into dizzying nonsense, and my head was pounding. I’d been vaguely aware at different points of other people entering and leaving the library, but they’d all given me a wide berth. I supposed that I should be thankful for being able to have uninterrupted peace and quiet in order to study. I pushed the chair back and was about to stand up, when Slim appeared, hovering at my shoulder.

“Are you ready for the fecking test?”

The pain in my head protested and intensified at the idea of having to continue to think and focus, but I nodded dumbly and reached behind my neck to massage it. The little creature remained expressionless, and instead placed a sheet of paper in front of me that he’d magicked from seemingly nowhere. He also picked up the pile of books, raising a single bushy eyebrow at me as he did so. I was vaguely impressed that he managed to balance the pile of books in one hand, and vaguely insulted that he thought that I’d cheat and had to whisk them away from me. I had to try hard not to bite out an annoyed comment and instead tucked the chair back in, curling my ankles around the legs. I rubbed my forehead and began.

All the books had been incredibly dry documents detailing long histories and laws relating the ridiculously complicated mage society. I now knew more about the state of legal affairs within the wizard system than I’d ever wanted to. Fortunately for myself, I’d had the shifter Way Directives hammered into me from the moment I’d arrived in Cornwall from a young age so I was pretty confident that I could absorb ridiculous rules and regulations without too much bother. The best thing was that there were remarkable similarities between the mages’ system and the shifters’ one. Other than some different terminology relating to specific magic details, the rules could virtually have been written by the same person. Once I started answering the questions, I realised that I was able to block out the pain in