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“Who calls people, ‘staff?’ Okay. I just light the match and say the words?”
“Say the words, then light the match. Your pronunciation is surprisingly good.”
I wrinkled my nose at her. Just because I couldn’t do magic before didn’t mean that I wasn’t well-trained. I held the paper that was now soaked and got out a match before the box floated off the table in the river I’d created! I felt a little light-headed, but what a rush!
I read the last paper without hesitation, feeling confident in spite of the likelihood that nothing would happen, since most people only have an easy affinity to one side of magic. I was saying the words correctly after all those years of doubting myself. Validation felt so good.
I lit the match and then waited. Nothing happened while the match burned down to my fingers, stinging them. I hissed and dropped the match in the puddle of water and with a sizzle a cloud of steam poofed into existence, so thick and heavy that I couldn’t see the woman sitting across the table from me. Cries of alarm came from the back while I blinked in the heavy fog, more than slightly stunned at my magnificence.
“You failed to fail and are required to choose a college from the list already referred to,” the woman said in a ghostly voice. The fog was doing weird things.
I sat there, feeling isolated, alone, still, caught in the silence like I’d felt when I’d been with him. Would I ever see my gargoyle again?
The fog eventually cleared as someone opened the door, thinning it out until I could once more see the outline of the woman.
“Which school will you choose, or do you need time to come to your decision?”
“Gray College,” I said because that was the only one in Singsong City, and I couldn’t leave my mother, however incredibly awkward it would be to work as janitor extraordinaire at night and to be a magic-user student during the day. I’d cope.
“Excellent, as Mr. Bellham has already taken residence in the house located in the suburbs just west of the city.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, standing up, and my sense of wonder getting washed away by alarm.
“Part of the deal includes meeting him for lessons in transformation every day after school for tea. You will practice your manners as well.”
“Transformation?”
“Naturally. You will continue to turn to stone until you have learned to shift into living stone, or the gargoyle form.”
I stopped breathing for the second time that day as shock and hope scrambled over each other in my chest. I whispered, “I can turn into a gargoyle?”
“You must, or you will die.”
I got magic and to become a winged protector with impermeable skin and the chance to hang out with him again? What a surprisingly good day this had turned out to be.
“You will also train with your betrothed on weekends. It would be best if you were capable of defending yourself against demons if you know what I’m… Miss Bellham? Are you…”
That thud was the sound of my face hitting the table on the way down. Using magic always took a lot of energy, but from someone who’d never done it before, to keep going with three different kinds of magic she’d never used, one after another? Not so smart. Maybe when I woke up, this would prove to be just a really weird wish-fulfillment dream.
Chapter
Ten
It wasn’t a dream, at least not wish-fulfillment, because I woke up in the back of Percival’s limo. He sat sprawled across from me, clearly needing some tea parties with my dad to straighten his posture. A headache throbbed behind my right eye so painfully that I wondered if I’d stabbed myself with the ice sculpture after all.
I blinked at him and slowly sat up, glancing around the otherwise empty back seat.
“Where did the lawyer go?”
“Miss Tertrue has left you in my care now that she’s finished traumatizing you. What happened, anyway?”
I scowled at him, because this was probably all his fault if I looked at the situation from the proper angle, but then I remembered the magic and stared at my shaking hands, trembling in front of me. I could turn into a gargoyle after I practiced with my father, unless I died, but who wanted to focus on that?
I leaned closer to him, waiting until he sat up slightly to hear what I had to say. “I did magic,” I whispered, waiting for his eyes to widen in disbelief.
They narrowed instead. “What kind of magic left you unconscious? She wouldn’t say.”
“I did water magic, or maybe it’s not called water magic. First, I turned the pitcher of water into ice spears that almost killed me using dark magic! I know that’s not cool. I mean, I probably still have spider guts on my hand, but Percival, can you imagine, dark magic water spikes? Me? It’s insane. And then there was the light magic, which was all splish, splashy, and not nearly as impressive, and then the steam. I’ve never seen so much steam. And it smelled like apples.”
