Before she delivered her answer.
“Maybe you should start withwhyhe’s doing it.”
“Because I messed things up for him. I got him demoted essentially.”
“Yeah, but he was already obsessed with you before that.”
Mina shrugged. “Maybe I was just an easy target, then.”
“I don’t know about that. I mean you’re here talking about murdering him.”
“It isn’t murder I have in mind.”
“Then what?” Anaya asked, one eyebrow raised.
As if what Mina was thinking involved a caper of some kind.
And of course, Anaya would have been down for it, clearly.
It was the reason she shook her head. “I just want him to leave me alone.”
“So then what you need is a leave-me-alone spell.”
“I can’t even make any spell at all. Never mind one that sounds made up. And somehow, I doubt I’m going to learn, because the last lecture I was in with him I couldn’t hear the professor over the sound of my own thundering heart.”
“Yeah, but lectures aren’t the only way to work out how to curse someone.”
“So what? I just go to the library and look it up?” She made a scoffing sound on the end of her sentence. But Anaya just stared at her in this long and very pointed sort of way, until finally, it clicked. “Oh mygod, I should totally go to the library and look it up. Why didn’t I think of going to the library and looking it up?”
“You’re not in your right mind. A homicidal magic wielder is trying to wear your intestines as a hat,” Anaya said, half laughing. But half serious, too. It made Mina’s stomach flip a little bit, to see that worry in her dark eyes.
So she tried to brush it off.
“I don’t think you get to call yourself a magic wielder until you graduate.”
“Somehow that doesn’t seem like the thing you should be focusing on.”
She sighed. “Because the other part makes me want to barf.”
“Pity. This food isoutrageous. Honestly, I’d give them credit if I didn’t suspect any authenticity is coming from whatever this dining room spell is ripping right out of my head,” Anaya said—almost offhandedly
But it made Mina shiver, just a little.
This place took, no question about that. And in ways you barely understood until the taking was already done. The only question was: How much could she take from it, before she had nothing left?
Chapter Seven
The library was enormous, of course. Though even by the standard she imagined, it was pretty staggering. It made her gasp, when she stepped through a pair of double doors that looked like nothing at all. They suggested something normal—but beyond was anything but. It was too big for the building it sat inside. Like an optical illusion, like something from a sci-fi show.
It took her five minutes to get from the entrance to the main desk. Then another ten to find the section she needed, after the iron-haired lady sitting behind the counter directed her to where it would be. Her legs were tired and her stomach was growling by the time she got there. She was genuinely starting to worry about getting lost and then starving to death.
But god, it was worth it for the books.
Oh, the books upon books upon books.
Their spines glittered in the dusty lowlight. They tempted her, from shelves that towered over her head and seemed to teeter under the pressure of them all. She found herself looking at the mosaic-patterned floors, head full of that story of a building sinking because the architect hadn’t accounted for the weight of the books.
She would have gladly sunk with it.
