Gwendolynne nods, swiping up a small drop of leaked colostrum with the tip of her index finger. “Yep. Apparently it requires a tether—some sort of magical object—which anchors the tear to our world and keeps it open.”
Rubbing my forehead, I consider this information. “So you think that Magecorp has some sort of magical object?”
She frowns. “I don’t know. I mean, logically the tethers would have to be positioned close to the tears, right? But we searched the common room pretty thoroughly tonight and found nothing.”
“Maybe it’s something that they keep at Magecorp?” I wonder aloud. “What if it works remotely, at a distance?” I remember her describing the circular room in the vault, where my father was secreted the day he was supposed to be in Wales.
Gwendolynne sticks out her lower lip. “It’s possible. But if there was something as important as a tether, they’d probably have locked it in the vault. There was a glowing rock there, but unless that rock is made of something that can withstand severe damage, then it should have been destroyed in the explosion—and it wouldn’t have caused tonight’s surge.”
Tipping my head back against the rough wood wall, I let out a long, slow exhale. “That’s true. Then I guess we need to keep looking at the sites where surges happened. Where have you checked so far?”
Finally, she raises her head, her brown eyes meeting mine. In the moonlight, they look almost black. But not the black of shadows, or funerals, or even the absence of light.
They’re dark like the star-spangled arch of a cloudless sky, or the soft space beneath your bedsheets when you burrow beneath them at night. They’re awarmsort of dark, a color that evokes pleasure, not something that causes pain.
“Just the common room.” Her teeth dig into her lower lip. “We haven’t had a chance to look anywhere else.”
“We could look here.” I cast a look at our surroundings. “That’s a start.”
We need to dosomething. The fact that the surges appear to be occurring with increasing frequency is worrisome.
Beside me, the qílín raises her head, nuzzling against my hand. And I scratch her in her mane until she whickers and lets out a little puff of air.
When I look up, Gwendolynne is watching me, a curious look upon her face. “What?” I say, suddenly self-conscious.
“It’s just interesting, that’s all. That the qílín likes you.” Her gaze drifts across to my newfound golden friend. “Apparently, according to the ancient myths, they’re only drawn to good people. To those who are pure of heart.”
It’s as though everything around me darkens, and I grimace, quickly withdrawing my hand.
“Well, Chan,” I say. “I suppose we must assume that the ancient myths are false.”
22
Gwendolynne
We spend the remainder of the predawn hours searching around the stables, while also keeping an eye on the qílín and her foal. At some point, Percy wakes from his slumber, and, from where he’s lounging in my room, asks me what happened. I assume he senses the stress-related cortisol spike still percolating in my bloodstream.
I manage, just, to stop myself from rolling my eyes; somehow my familiar managed to sleep through one of the most singularly traumatic events of my life.
It’s only when the morning students come in to relieve us that Harrisford and I trudge back to Heywood Hall. I’m so tired that fog has settled into every sulcus of my brain. My movements feel two steps behind, delayed somehow, as though I’m trying to run a marathon underwater. I’m thinking of nothing but my bed and the quilt my grandma made—it’s still comfortable, even with all the scorch marks burned into it thanks to Percy.
But even with the fatigue, my mind still tries to cram in as much study as possible.It’s my amygdala. My amygdala’s having trouble talking to my forebrain.Then I shake my head. “Quit it, Gwen,” I mutter to myself beneath my breath. I steal a look at Harrisford, to check that he hasn’t heard.
He hasn’t. Thankfully, he’s so exhausted himself that he’s merely walking along, both hands shoved in his pockets, his eyes trained on the ground. I study his profile, then duck my head, flushing with embarrassment at what I’d done last night to get to sleep.
When we reach the entrance of Heywood Hall, he turns his red-rimmed gaze on me. “Well, good night, then. Or good morning. Or…” He waves a long-fingered hand, somehow managing to make the movement look regal. “Never mind.” For a moment, he pauses, as if on the cusp of saying something…But he says nothing, and instead starts walking off in the direction of the south wing.
For some reason, this irks me. He’s really going to just…leave…after we’d done something as magical as delivering a qílín? Though I suppose, for him, it isn’t that extraordinary. I’m sure Harrisford-fucking-Briggs has pulled many a calf out of dragon mothers, and other equally heroic shit. Still…
“Hey,” I blurt out, before I can stop myself.
He pivots slowly, blinking at me in the watery light of dawn. “Yes, Chan?”
“You didn’t think I could do it, did you?”Fuck.Not only is my amygdala not talking to my cerebral cortex, the latter has clearly removed all its inhibitions on my speech center, too.
His eyebrows knit. “Do what?”
“Pull the foal.”
