“You guys are with Burnie? He’s the best. Let me know if you want anything else!” The eager young server smiled, exposing his plastic fangs. He had blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. Will did a double take, instinctively flinching away. “Chill out, man, it’s Halloween. They’re just plastic!” The server handed them a menu.
Despite the scare, Will was starving. He sat down and dug into the feast.
“You’re starting with French Fries? I’m going straight to that Monte Christo sandwich. Mystic miracles! It looks amazing!” Zani slid to the back of the circular booth. She shrugged her satchel off her shoulder and reached out for one half of the deep-fried concoction. When she bit into it, her eyes half closed. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had anything this hot and delicious?” She dunked the sandwich into a dish of raspberry sauce and took another bite. This time, her eyes nearly rolled back in her head. “Oh my snozzberries, Will. You’ve got to try this.” She shoved the other half at him.
The menu was oversized and extensive. It divided food into fun categories like Mood Food, Wet Food, Big Food, and Food on Bread. There was an entire section dedicated to different flavors of fondue.
“Why don’t we have anything like this in our time?” Will fanned himself with the menu to help dissipate some of the heat from the spicy jalapeño fondue he was overindulging in. “I think it would make for a perfect port stop if you could just locate it on the right ley line nexus.”
Zani set down her sandwich at the mention of ley lines. “Speaking of ley lines,” she said, “I learned quite a bit more from Cosimo about the bloodstone and Celestial Sapphire, and how it’s all related. Do you want me to tell you now, or should we wait till we get back to our own time?”
“You make it sound as if it’s urgent.” Will frowned and reached out with a napkin to wipe a little raspberry sauce off her chin. “So Cosimo really enlightened you then?” His stomach was twisted in knots. He wanted to hear what she had learned. But he didn’t want to hear about Cosimo. “Do you still think he stole the stone back from you?”
“I’m not sure I do.” Zani slurped some fizzy fountain soda through a straw and closed her eyes again. “Oh, fairy foofies, that’s good stuff. Do you know how hard it was to get a sugar fix in the seventeenth century?”
“Mmmhmm.” Will nodded. “So you don’t think Cosimo stole it?”
“I’m not sure,” Zani admitted. “Even he wasn’t sure. All I can tell you is that Cosimo of the seventeenth century couldn’t get rid of that stone fast enough. He wanted nothing to do with it.”
“How much time exactly did you spend with Cosimo in the seventeenth century?” Will asked, trying not to seem jealous as he dragged a French fry savagely through some ketchup.
“Are you jealous, Will?” Zani’s eyes grew wide as she studied him. “There’s no need to bludgeon that potato stick. I assure you, my interest in Cosimo is purely professional. I only saw him once. And the only topic we discussed was the bloodstone. He told me exactly how he made it and how it’s cursed.”
“What’s this?” Burnside slid into the booth and cut her off. He seemed far less rumpled, but even more aged. Almost as if he’d come back from a twenty year long shower with a new set of clothing. Which, Will reflected, was entirely possible. “You’re talking shop? Not in my booth. This is a sacred space. We don’t discuss anything serious here! Not until after dessert. Now pass me my sandwich!”
An hour later, Will and Zani were following Burnside across the campus of Johns Hopkins University.
“This is a critical moment in progressive magical history,” Burnside whispered. “It marks the first intentional integration of magical folk with Ordinaries at a mainstream university. This year’s freshman class includes forty-two witches and twenty-seven shifters from all around the world.”
Burnside was providing context for the lecture he was about to deliver while they walked through the quad at a fast clip. The talk was to take place in Gilman Hall. It had been advertised to both magical and Ordinary students. Flyers were posted throughout the physics and engineering buildings, as well as the notice boards in front of the freshman dorms. The talk was well publicized. But as they crossed the campus and kept seeing students in costume, Will wondered if the holiday would affect Burnside’s turnout.
“Has the mixed university population experiment ever been repeated?” Will shot a glance at Zani. He knew she had attended an Ordinary university, with Maida as her roommate. It wasn’t entirely uncommon in their time for this to happen. But it was far from the norm.
As far as Will knew, most magical folk still kept to themselves, and maintained the veil that separated themselves from the Ordinaries. Few Ordinaries could handle the shock of enlightenment without going mad. “Isn’t this rather a risk for the Ordinaries?”
“The Ordinaries here are not enlightened.” Burnside put the fear to rest. “They perceive the magical folk as creative, eccentric, and odd.” He made a wry face as if to saygo figure! “But they can’t quite put their finger on it. The real experiment is the co-mingling of witches and shifters. This never would have been accepted in a purely magical setting. It could only have happened on an Ordinary Campus.”
“Makes total sense to me,” Zani interjected. She hitched her satchel up on her shoulder and tossed her period appropriate feathered hair over her shoulder. There hadn’t been time to style it. It was just part of the cloak’s magic. Will thought she looked fantastic in a close-fitting wrap dress and wooden clogs. Much better than he looked in the tight bell bottoms and pointed-collar polo the other cloak had chosen for him. He didn’t love the look of his platform shoes, either. Burnside had been more prepared. He’d changed into his own clothing from the era. He now looked every inch the natty professor in a corduroy jacket with leather patches at the elbow.
“I was hardly the only magical student in my class, shifter or otherwise,” Zani continued, “but we were so few and far between, we had to stick together. We were far more accepting of each other than the general magic population.”
“Did your social circle include many vampires, then?” Will teased. But he was only half teasing. He was curious if Zani’s open-minded attitude toward vampires went back to her college days.
“No, Will.” She rolled her eyes. “There were no vampires at my school. At least not while we were there. Having a vampire at large on a college campus is never an ideal situation. I think we’ve all seen the films.” She touched his arm reassuringly. “I don’t think vampires would have been my thing as an undergrad, anyway.” Her lips twisted as she attempted to repress a smile.
“Who was your type, then?” Will tried to downplay his curiosity by pausing and pretending to read a flyer tacked to a tree. The bottom of it was snipped into fringe and someone had handwritten a phone number onto each scrap. He tore off one and crumpled it absentmindedly in his palm.
“I was into my professors.” Zani cracked a grin, laughing at herself. Burnside stood a little straighter and adjusted his tie. “Are you looking for a roommate in 1978, Will?” Zani gestured at the flyer, and the scrap of paper he was still worrying in his hand.
“You never know!” Will shoved it in his pocket.
As they continued to make progress across campus, Will searched his memory for what he knew about the school. The name Johns Hopkins was familiar to him, not just for the medical research and scientific discoveries the school was famous for. There was a closer connection.
“Wait a moment…” Will stopped in his tracks. “Didn’t Buffalo Westabrook go to college here?” That was the reason the name of the Ordinary school was so familiar to him. Will didn’t think he’d heard him speak of it, but he’d seen the degree hanging in Buffalo’s office.
“Indeed, he did.” Burnside smiled knowingly. “Along with a few others whose names you might recognize.” He pointed at a red brick building, stopping them before they turned the corner and hustling them to a plain, unmarked door. “Come, we’re here. Let’s go to the side entrance to avoid the crowds. They’ll be lining up right about now.”
Once inside, Burnside led them down a corridor that smelled of floor wax and old books. The forest green walls were lined with display cases full of academic treasures from the archaeology and anthropology departments. For an Ordinary school, Will thought it felt quite magical. At last, they reached the lecture hall.
