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“No,” we chorus.
Lords sighs. “I’m terribly sorry to crimp yourextra-curricularactivities. It’s not ideal for me, either. But while Doctor Prince, Jane Serpa, and I are figuring out how to pin this creature into her own realm, someone should be with you. You were lucky today, Teddy. Could you have closed the portal on your own if Doctor Prince and Gabe hadn’t been there?”
I glance over my shoulder at Gabe who shrugs.
“Prolly not,” I admit. “The further I’m away from the boys, the harder it is for me to draw on and manipulate their magics. But fear and adrenaline amps up our quaternion, just like any other energy. I got fear and adrenaline to spare facing Klotho, that’s for sure.”
Lords smiles gently. “I’m sure. I’ll let you eat and rest tonight, but tomorrow morning I’ll move my office here and tomorrow night after your last classes, you’ll join me and Doctor Prince in the practice hall to work on closing portals.”
“What if we go somewhere safe for reading week?” Darwin asks. “Somewhere Klotho can’t go?”
“Where is that?” Lords asks.
“Faery,” Darwin says.
Chapter52
The Other Winter Prince
The last day of classes is a waste of time, in my estimation.
Although classes are usually staggered through the week so I have three on my worst day, for the last day of classes, I have all five. Because Bevvy is trying to kill me before Klotho can finish the job.
Each last class is ninety minutes. Seven and half hours of class in one day. And all we do in each ninety-minute session is review until my brains are melting out of my ears.
I study better on my own anyway. Always have.
Or with my boys. There are serious perks to studying with my boys.
My very last class is Geomancy with Professor DeWinter. He’ll never be my favorite teacher, even though I own his subject’s arse. He can’t fault me on my knowledge or use of minerals and rocks, so instead he likes to nitpick at my casting form. A chant’s a bloody chant, mate. Don’t matter if I slouch or keep my eyes on my surroundings instead of focusing all my concentration on my target the way he wants us to. I’d rather not be blindsided when I’m in the middle of doing a spell.
And then there’s the whole destroying wild magic with the circle of doom thing. He still has to answer for his part in that.
DeWinter holds Geomancy in one of the small lecture rooms upstairs in Old Chapel. He lectures from a podium at the front of the room, while we sit in a half-moon around him. Unlike my other classes, I’ve migrated to the back of the class. DeWinter rarely looks up from his lecture notes, so there’s no point sitting closer to the front to make eye-contact. He frequently has students come up and demonstrate, but he goes in strict alphabetical order, so there’s no advantage to sitting at the front in the hopes of getting called on for class participation brownie points.
I had to read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays in high school—which honestly should be classified as cruel and unusual punishment—and I remember that he wrote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Not sure DeWinter is actually a hobgoblin or not, but his foolish consistency does my napper in.
As the clock ticks with glacial slowness toward the end of this ridiculously long day, DeWinter calls a sophomore up to go over the four basic elements of psammokinesis: spells that control the movement of sand.
I haven’t studied psammokinesis before coming to Bevington. The control of fine particles is still not my best thing, so despite how utterly brain-fried I am, I sit up and pay attention to the demonstration.
As I watch the sophomore twist her fingers into the sigil for the second element, out of the corner of my eye, I see DeWinter smile.
I shift my attention to him. He’s usually so sour-faced. He’s not a bad-looking bloke, if you fancy thin, middle-aged men with sharp jaws and graying crew-cuts. It’s just that he constantly looks like he’s smelled a fart.
He tears a small strip off his notes, hunches over the podium as he writes in tiny letters on the strip—lecture me about my posture, will he?—and rolls up the strip between his fingers.
Into a tiny scroll.
He slips the scroll into his jacket pocket.
All the blood drains out of my head as I make the connection.
The funny little notes Jade left for Gabe. All those tiny scrolls stuffed into the Kraken’s tentacle.
DeWinter taught her to do that. He was her other lover.
