Rawlins had hoped that ending things with Ellsbeth would put his mind at ease. He had anticipated a persistent sense of relief, falling asleep easier every night with the need for fewer drinks, thoughts freed up from rumination to give back to his work. But in the week that followed dinner at Abyssinia, those hopes were dashed one by one as she continued to consume his thoughts. His obsession was like a rat let loose in his mind; driven from the attic, it was now loose in the walls, gnawing at the wires of his subconscious.
He felt guilty for having hurt her. No matter how much he believed that this was for her protection in the long run, he could not forget the sight of her across the table, fighting back tears while attempting to project strength. Every instinct compelled him to comfort her, but he knew trying to do so would only push her further away.
Her behavior toward him did not help. In class, Ellsbeth acted unfazed, as though the incident, and their entire relationship, had been erased from her mind. Rawlins didn’twanther to be sad and sulky, but at least then he would know what was going on with her, rather than be left guessing at the meaning of her inscrutable expressions.
When he retrieved his mail from the faculty lounge one afternoon, he crossed paths with Gallway, who asked him with affected casualness, “Say Tad, about the Storer girl…I heard she’s been having some trouble with her thesis and might be looking for a new adviser?”
Rawlins froze up; the question caught him off guard, and questionsricocheted through his mind. Was this rumor driven by Ellsbeth inquiring after a change? Or was it simply the result of Lennox grumbling about the lack of a précis? Part of him thought he should seize on this possibility and encourage it, to push her further out of his life; perhaps then he could get his mind back and untangle the web of complicated feelings. But some strangely possessive instinct reared its head; he could not bear the thought of any other professor being the recipient of her startlingly brilliant thoughts.
So he brushed off Gallway’s question dismissively. “Oh, we’ll see…She’s just having trouble locking onto a topic, but I think we’ll get there.”
Gallway nodded, apparently agreeing to leave it at that.
By Thursday night, Rawlins had convinced himself that the reason Ellsbeth wouldn’t leave his mind was not anything to do with his feelings, or the breakup, or the persistent sexual fantasies. It was her obscuration ritual.
He was trying to grade papers but kept clicking back over to her PDF, saved on his desktop. He had read through it a dozen times. He needed to know if it could actuallywork.And since ending things between them romantically had caused her to pull away, he would have to find out on his own.
He reviewed the list of elementals required for the ritual Ellsbeth had written; none were especially rare, but he didn’t have everything in his personal collection. The smart course of action would’ve been to wait until he could stop by the Practicum and get what he required without logging an after-hours visit. But he was buzzing with excitement, itching to get started. So he drove down to campus, briefly parking in a fire lane with his hazards blinking while he hastily retrieved the substances he needed.
Back at home, he assembled his materials on the dining room table and again considered Ellsbeth’s written ritual. If it was successful, the effect would be held latent in a clay compound, then activated upon contact with its subject; it was calculated for a ten-second duration, but Rawlins edited Ellsbeth’s quantities to increase it to thirty seconds. He needed to be able to actuallyusethe ritual, and while the duration was easy to scale, he could see a different problem. If the target was affected the moment the compound made contact, that might raisesuspicions; it would not be terribly difficult for any onlooking strangers to connect thetouchwith theeffect.So Rawlins added an additional step, infusing the clay compound with a quantity of elderwort to build in a ten-second delay.
Rawlins conducted the ritual in his study; the desk rolled aside easily, and a ritual circle was engraved on the floor. The mathematics were complicated, and it was nearly midnight by the time he was able to begin, but the ritual itself did not take long (though the smell of sizzling metal clung to the inside of his nostrils and his curtains). Half an hour later, he retrieved the clay compound from the center of the ritual circle. He could not be confident of success until he had a subject on whom to test the effect. But he thought he could sense a crackle of energy within.
Unfortunately, given the late hour and the fact that the shops were all closed, there was no one to test it on. Rawlins had no choice but to try to get some sleep, knowing well that it would be a battle. He was constantly aware of the clay compound in the next room—the danger it posed, as if it were a loaded gun. He quieted his mind with whiskey until he was at last able to fall asleep.
In the morning, he woke with his mouth sticky and dry, feeling hung over but buzzing with anxious energy. He brought the clay compound with him wrapped in a handkerchief, sweating as he walked around campus, trying to appear casual when he greeted students and colleagues despite carrying in his possession an arcane-influenced substance that was, if effective, extremely illegal.
Rawlins made his way across the quad toward the student union. Dense crowds were streaming in and out of the building, students talking and eating breakfast on the way to class. A gangly undergraduate in short sleeves was unlocking his bike out front. Perfect. Rawlins walked behind him, pretended to trip, and grabbed the boy’s arm—pressing the clay compound into the skin of his forearm.
“Pardon me,” Rawlins said. The boy gave a curtno problemnod and went back to unlocking his bike while Rawlins kept walking, slowing down, checking his watch, counting down the ten-second delay.
The boy was about to climb onto his bike when suddenly, he froze. He stared straight ahead, eyes glassy, expression blank.
It worked.
Rawlins was momentarily petrified by his own success—and the terror of being found out.
But he needed to test the effect. He walked briskly back over to the boy and spoke quickly. “Touch your nose.” The boy complied immediately, seemingly without even questioning why he was doing so. Rawlins nearly laughed in astonishment.
Now it was time for the real test. “You should go get a sandwich,” Rawlins said, pointing toward the student union. “You need a sandwich.” The boy immediately seemed to agree and abandoned his bike, leaving it unlocked on the rack. He walked up the wide steps without even looking back. Rawlins watched him, glancing at his watch, as the thirty-second duration came to a close moments before the boy reached the entrance—and stopped in his tracks.
The boy glanced around, apparently confused, second-guessing the impulse that had led him up there. When he looked back with a befuddled expression, Rawlins turned away and fled toward his office, glancing over his shoulder briefly to confirm that the boy was indeed returning to his bicycle.
That told him everything he needed to know. The ritual was effective, producing the intended effect of suggestibility and compliance. But the effects did not last beyond the prescribed duration. They didn’t penetrate deep enough into the mind to affect someone’s decisions on any timeline beyond the immediate. And that’s what Rawlinsactuallyneeded to do. Change someone’s mind. It was possible.
Rawlins retreated to his office, reeling from his own success. He desperately wanted to tell all of this to someone. Not justsomeone,of course. The only person who could possibly understand. He wanted to bring her in and shut the door and tell her she was brilliant and unburden himself of it all. Not only what he haddone,but how it felt. The rush of excitement, but more than that, another layer to his response—one he dimly recalled from his earliest days experimenting with arcane mechanicals in his childhood bedroom. It was the pleasure ofpower.Of opening new horizons of what might be possible, exerting his will upon the universe in exciting new ways.
But the return of that pleasure was overshadowed by another feeling:guilt.He recalled the boy’s docile expression, the vacancy in his eyes, the confusion that had followed the expiration of the effect.Harmless as the short-lived magic might be, Rawlins knew it was unfair and potentially traumatic to meddle with the mind and will of another like that.
It was strange to feel the guilt and exhilaration live side by side, and he wanted to share it all. He felt certain she would understand. She may have even gotten it working herself. But at dinner she had said that she would never do such a thing. Which was eithertrue,in which case he couldn’t tell her about his own use of the ritual, because she would think him a monster…or it was a lie, in which case he couldnevertell her because she was deceiving him, which meant he couldn’t trust her with his secret.
Rawlins looked at his calendar. Five weeks until Max’s parole hearing. The clock was counting down. He needed to act.
But he wasn’t ready yet. The arcane influence he would need to enact was something more lasting and subtle than the superficial control he had exerted over the boy with the bike. Rawlins needed to build on Ellsbeth’s work, take it to another level. But as he considered the complexity of her ritual…Rawlins didn’t have a clue where to begin. He had to talk this out with her, to enlist her mind to help him solve the problem. He needed to find a way to reopen dialogue between them…when he had just pushed her away.
Knowing his office was nolonger neutral ground, Rawlins instead proposed that they meet in the statuary garden behind the Hays Library. He hoped that the familiarity of a text would help defuse the tension growing between them, but her reply of a thumbs-up kept things feeling strained.
He sat at a picnic bench, attempting to grade papers so he’d look busy when she arrived. Clouds hung in the sky, and the chilly air meant that it was barely warm enough to reasonably sit outside. Rawlins sipped tea from a thermos to keep from shivering. The weather, he told himself, was entirely to blame, not any sort of nervous anticipation.
