Page 63 of Class Studies
Smiling, I crept over to my workstation and picked up where I left off yesterday.
My copy of Abe’s invention waited for me to try out. It needed a real name.
My nameless stuffed turtle watched me from his spot atop the potions Officer Keres had rescued from Damon’s burnt apartment. Its plastic eyes judged me for my lack of designation.
I need to test out my copy with a potion that had someone’s essence, as Abe had. Which meant I either needed to make a new one or.…
My gaze moved to the potions sitting under my turtle, and I flipped on the lamp in the corner. Two of the brews Officer Keres returned to me were unmarked, and I’d assumed they were a test from Officer Keres on self-control, so I hadn’t touched them.
I wrinkled my nose and crept to the couch. The stack of my master’s tomes sat on the floor. Pulling out the most recent book, I double-checked I hadn’t woken Saffron before padding back to my workstation.
The MA figured out Damon’s code so fast I hardly believed it. The ciphers were only in our heads. He’d been so paranoid and hateful of the MA—I assumed cracking them would take longer.
What if they hadn’t cracked it and Officer Keres lied to me?
I flipped to the end of the book, where the notes on our most recent potion would be. After replacing Ram’s magic with my own, I’d spent an entire day pouring over Damon’s books—looking for anything about me and my magic. There wasn’t even a scribble in the margin. It was dry pages of recipes, records, and nameless sales.
I ran my finger down, stopping at the second to last potion we made. The last one burned in my memory. The bright pink liquid mixed with his lifeblood and shorted his laptop as flames consumed our lives. I braced for a wave of emotion, but it didn’t come.
An odd smile hooked my lips. I focused on the second to last entry again. ‘Slow poison, tasteless, odorless, binds magic inside the body—estimated time of death twelve hours after ingestion. No antidote.’ Below it, I filled in ingredients and their potency, and blood was on the list. I’d drawn a symbol in the column that would have its match on the potion bottle, preventing any mix-ups.
Moving my stuffed turtle, I studied the bottle. Exactly where I would have put it, a matching nine-point star dented the surface of the glass. I bit my lower lip. Why had Officer Keres given these back to me? He specifically said he destroyed the other two because they were poisons.
With a deep breath, I decided he lied to me. He didn’t know what this was or anything Damon had written in our tombs.
I put on my sense-enhancing earrings. The cork made a popping noise as I pulled it off. I carefully dripped a bit of the potion on Abe’s original testing paper and my replica.
Strands of cable-like magic snaked out of both papers. They latched onto the ruby red spectrum along the top, and a tree of my crystal magic grew out of the middle. I opened my mouth to intensify the smells wafting off the paper and listened for any out-of-character sounds.
Before either magic could solidify, a soft crackling hummed. The drop of potion turned black and started to smoke. In seconds, the black spread. Acid, grapefruit, and metal, but not copper, wafted into the air. With a small pop, both papers disintegrated into gray ash.
I wrinkled my nose and turned on my fancy tablet, jotting down my experience. My hair was still a tangled mess from last night, and I combed through it with my fingers, staring at the two piles of gray ash. At least I knew I could replicate Abe’s test.
Beryl’s musk of black pepper drifted to my nose. If it weren’t for my heightened senses, I’d have screamed when the mage wrapped his arms around me and kissed my ear.
“Morning, Dot,” Beryl whispered. “I was hoping you’d scream in surprise and wake up the other two bums you found.”
He smiled against my ear, and I leaned back into his solid chest.
“I can smell you a mile away with these on.” I tapped my earring, also keeping my voice low.
Beryl licked up the delicate metal cupping the back of my ear. His morning wood pressed into my backside. “I’ll have to keep that in mind. What are you up to so early?”
I wiggled my butt. “Testing, but I have an idea about something better we can do to make me scream.”
Beryl grabbed my hips and kissed my shoulders.
I don’t know what made me think of it, but the question that had been on the tip of my tongue last night popped into my head. “Beryl, did the dress you loaned me belong to one of the girls in your harem?”
Beryl froze mid-kiss, and I panicked. Like me, Beryl rarely talked about his past.
I shouldn’t have asked.
“I mean, it doesn’t matter,” I babbled. “I know resources are limited here, and the dress was perfect.”
Beryl straightened and stepped away from me. “It was. I need to take a piss.”
I had no idea I was capable of killing a mood so fast. Beryl disappeared into the washroom, leaving me pondering his answer. Was it perfect, or had it belonged to one of his girls?