came through the globe in a high electric pitch. “Bugger, it’s Demos. We can’t…the rules.”
She placed her lips on his again and muttered against them. “I don’t care about ze rules.”
The knock sounded louder.
“Come on, Merl’s in the corridor,” a girl’s voice I recognized called out. Lei?
The globe slipped from my hand and popped against the edge of the sink. Gah. How stupid are you, Gia? Guys like Arik don’t like girls like you.
I was crazy to think he would. I was nowhere near as sexy as Veronique. There was no competition. Game over.
I scrubbed my palm clean under the scorching tap water. As I dried my hands, Veronique walked into the restroom. Her hips snapped back and forth as she clunked in on spiky high heels.
“Well, fancy meeting you here, no?”
“No. I mean, sure, whatever.” I tried to get by her. “Excuse me.”
She fixed a look on me. “How are you adjusting to ze havens?”
“I guess okay,” I said, feeling uncomfortable at the concern on her face. Or guilty for not liking her after seeing her with Arik in that globe.
“Vell, if you need, I’m ‘appy to help out.” She smiled and swiped a lipgloss wand across her lips, staining them red.
Arik was leaning against the wall when I walked out of the bathroom. The smile on his face slipped, and he hurried over to me. “What’s the matter? Did something happen?”
I dropped my gaze. “I don’t get it. Why would you say you liked me when you’re already with someone else?”
“Pardon?” he said.
My stare found his. “Veronique?”
He didn’t say anything for several rushing beats of my heart. Not until his confused look changed to something like understanding. He smiled then. “There’s nothing there, but I gather you’ve already formed an opinion of me. Maybe it’s best to leave it at that. I’ll show you to your seat.”
“Sure. Fine. But I can find my own seat.” I headed for the dining room, acutely aware of Arik’s steps behind me.
He followed me the entire way back, and I avoided eye contact as he pulled the seat out for me. “Thank you,” I said, sitting.
“Good evening,” he said and nodded to the others at the table.
I snatched up my napkin and placed it on my lap. Everyone was too busy eating their desserts to notice how shaky my hands were. I stared at the dessert in front of me.
“It’s a sticky toffee pudding,” Professor Attwood said. “Eat it—”
“I know. I’ll like it, right?”
The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. “I fear I’m becoming predictable.”
Veronique smiled at me as she meandered past to her table, hips doing that snapping thing. I frowned as she placed her hand on Arik’s forearm and, as Nana would say, kittenishly giggled at whatever he was saying.
Nothing there, my ass.
I dug my spoon into the sticky toffee and took a big bite.
Not long after dinner, I sat at the desk in my room, leafing through the books Professor Attwood had given me. It felt good to be free from that corseted contraption. How the hell did women eat back in those days?
Reading about charms, spells, and all the stuff wizards could do was fascinating and scary at the same time. Some wizards had the ability to weave their minds to another person’s or even two minds together that weren’t their own. They used it for spying, and in some cases, stealing identities.
I yawned. “Great. Now we need firewalls for our brains.”
I closed the book on charms, set it aside, and decided to read more about the Mystiks in The Invisible Places by Gian Bianchi, Professor of Wizardry. Someone had written a poem on the page before the first chapter. Black ink drops and a fingerprint smudged it. The title was in Italian, but the verse was in English, which struck me as strange.
Libero IL Tesoro
A religious man’s charm hangs from his vest;
A school of putti, one of which sees further than the rest;
Strong women flank the ceiling, the one in Sentinel dress holds an enchanted point small in size;
Behind Leopold she stands, one hand resting on a crown and the other
holding a rolled prize;
With numbers in her mind and knowledge in her hands, on her brow a crown does rest;
In front of the world, he wears his honor on his chest;
Beneath destruction and rapine, he scribes the word, while time falls;
All these things are within the library walls.
Poetry was all rhyme and no reason sometimes. Afton loved this stuff, and I wished she were here to