“Wow. You’re amazing.” Heloise’s praise is completely genuine, and wholly justified.
“Like I said, I was just really fascinated by the Magecorp blueprints and wanted to get to the bottom of how they do it.” Conall shifts on his feet, clearly uncomfortable with the praise. “How they actually harvest magic, I mean. I should have been studying for exams, but…” He shrugs.
I think about the stack of IDs in Darghan Briggs’s drawer. The deaths recorded on Nora Chapman’s lists. The qílín foal that Harrisford and I saved with my hands (and his body).
And mostly…Mostly I think about Gary the guinea pig: his stiff little legs and Conall’s palpable grief as he cried over his friend.
“No.” Finally, I manage to stab through the outside of the abscess with the blade. A torrent of foul-smelling, partially inspissated pus pours out, and we all gag.
Ugh, says Percy, from a distance.That isdisgusting.This is followed by the marked sound of him retching up his breakfast. I don’t know what he’s vomiting on, but I’m willing to bet it’s my freshly washed laundry—or something roughly equivalent.
I frown.You’re not even here, Percy.
True, he replies.But remember: I feel everything that you feel, Hairless One.
This is true; I can feel everything he feels too. It’s unsettling, since I’ve always kept my emotions so walled off: behind my mask, inside my chest, in the cuts I make on my skin.
I shake my head to clear my thoughts, focusing on the trapped magic that is unfurling from the cat’s incision. It hits me at once—the potent swell of too much magic, combined with a gangrenous stench. The magic has been trapped for so long that it’s turned all black, so concentrated it is actually noxious.
“This,” I say to Conall, voicing words that I nevereverthought would come out of my own mouth, “iswaymore important than a bunch of bloody exams.”
Later, Heloise and I lounge on her bed with glasses of red wine and an array of expensive cheeses arranged artfully on a cheese board. Percy is present too—now that I’ve finally told Heli about him, I thought he’d appreciate a change of scenery.
Heloise’s dorm room is in the east wing, which is not quite as fancy as the truly posh south wing, but still much nicer than mine. (Agreed, says Percy, his tail flicking back and forth.She has far better taste than you.)
I scowl. Kind Percy is gone and Snarky Percy is back, apparently.
It’s a bright, comfortable, cozy room, which Heloise has decorated in a multicolored riot of varying patterns and textures. Technically, it should clash—but somehow it just works. It’s the exact type of room you’d expect Heloise to have, given her personality.
We’re trawling through Heli’s mother’s lists, our laptops propped open—mine old and clunky, hers new and sleek. The aim is to research as many of the dead people as possible and see if we can turnup any clues. Any patterns. Absolutely anything whatsoever. I’ve been feeling crushed by the weight of frustration since leaving the gala; it’s as though the information we need is dancing just beyond our reach, and only dribbling through in tiny increments that don’t give us the full picture.
I draw in a deep breath.It’s no different to working up a case, Gwen. You just have to take each little bit of information and put it together to formulate a diagnosis.Then, letting my sigh whoosh out of me, I type the next name into my browser’s search bar.
“It was the surges, wasn’t it?” Heloise says suddenly, fixing her gaze on me.
“What was the surges?” I mumble, preoccupied with clicking through the dozens of listings the search engine has onBenjamin Purcell.
“The reason you agreed to go to the gala with Harrisford Briggs.”
My head snaps up. Hearing his name spill from Heloise’s wine-stained lips makes me so irrationally angry. “Yes,” I say, indignant. “We were trying to look for tethers. We figured there might be some remnant of one where the last big explosion happened—”
“I knew it!” she says, slapping my shoulder. “Iknewyou’d never agree to go anywhere with that prick voluntarily.”
“Of course I wouldn’t.” My mood has abruptly soured, thinking about how Harrisford had abandoned me midkiss. “He’s an arrogant arsehole and I want nothing more to do with him. Ever,everagain.”
Heloise gives me a sly half smile. “Don’t know if he would say the same thing, G.”
I fix her with my most withering glare. “Yes, he would. I hate him. He hates me. We only agreed to work together because we’re both trying to come first.”
And I’m going to beat him, I add silently.
Even if it kills me, I’m going to wipe the floor with Harrisford-fucking-Briggs. I’m still four points ahead of him; I gained an additional two points for successfully treating the magiphilic cat’s abscess, and he gained two points for something I don’t know, and don’t care at all, about.
“Mmm-hmmm.” Heli takes a sip of her wine, that infernal smile still on her lips.
“Anyway,” I say, distressed by the unpleasant turn our conversation has suddenly taken. “Have you found out anything interesting about the dead folk?”
After placing her glass carefully onto her bedside table, Heloise tugs her computer further up her lap. She screws her face up in disgust, then looks up. “There’ve been more deaths.”
