“That did not involve fire.”
Jupiter grinned. “Is that where you were? Throwing hands with your dresser?”
I looked at Jupiter. She’d cut and dyed her hair over break, but her small, pretty face and giant brown doe eyes were the same snowy picture I remembered. Jupiter’s rainbow bob had transformed into a galactic purple pixie cut. Glitter for days, from her scalp to the choppy ends. She could’ve been carved out of the night sky.
“I texted you a few minutes ago,” she went on with a shrug. “I thought maybe you just decided not to come back.”
It’s not like I hadn’t considered pissing off into the wilderness before the quarter started. “Yeah, my dad would murder me,” I said. “I just missed my alarm and overslept. Had to use the vial you gave me to get here when I did.” My very slight English accent reared its ugly head toward the end. I sighed, too tired to actively repress it. I usually sounded decently American, but there was an undercurrent of Britishness from my childhood that I couldn’t seem to shake.
Jupiter stared at me. Her eyes just oozed pity.
“That was a good call.” Jupiter nodded. “Professor Crotchety is already out for blood. He’d have been furious.”
“No kidding,” I said. “How was your break?”
“Oh, it was stupendous!” She’d stayed on campus for an internship with the Administrative Coven. Something with the Head Wistress, though she didn’t get the chance to tell me what before we left.
“If I stay on schedule, I could have a spot on the coven in... seven years, I think they said. Maybe less.”
Two weeks with Jupiter and they were already making her promises. It wasn’t impossible, just... pretty damn quick.
“That’s awesome, Jupe.” I smiled. The smile was critical.
“I think my parents kind of screwed me on that front. No decent witchcraft school is ever going to have a Grand Master Kevin,” Kev said and wrinkled his nose. “My name just doesn’t command respect, you know?”
“Why not change it?” Jupiter asked with a shrug. “I changed my hair, just change your name.”
“Name changes don’t come in cheap cardboard boxes.”
“Did you just call me cheap?”
“Thrifty?”
Jupiter looked at me, distraught. “Does my hair look cheap?”
“No,” I said, “it looks upsettingly expensive, actually.” We both looked at Kevin. I held my eyebrows up to the ceiling in a rendition of “just agree with me.”
He held up his hands. “You think I know anything about this? I’ve had the same haircut for six years.”
“Which is exactly why there will never be a Grand Master Kevin,” I said.
Jupiter laughed.
But honestly, that didn’t surprise me. Everything Kevin did was purposeful, meticulous. Auburn hair gelled to shiny perfection, uniform pressed free of wrinkles, no stains, no smudges, and a decorative ascot knotted around his shirt collar. Today, the ascot was red with a paisley pattern embroidered in gold thread. His notebook was open—blank pages, but he wrote in perfectly straight lines. Wedding-invitation-esque cursive.
“How was Branson?” I asked.
“Devastatingly Midwestern,” he answered, not missing a beat. “But my mom did take me to a pretty great show. This couple had seventeen kids and taught them all to play jug band instruments.”
“And that was great?” Jupiter asked, laughing.
“What part of ‘devastatingly Midwestern’ did you not understand?”
“Well, I think that’s sweet,” she said. “Personally, I’d love sixteen siblings to play washboards with.”
“Tell me you’re being sarcastic.”
“Being an only child sucks. I had to tell sweeping soap opera stories with my Barbies alone. Ken holding Stacey hostage to get Barbie to take him back isn’t worth anything if you know it’s coming.”
We stared at her.
“Come on, back me up here, Em.” She looked at me expectantly.
“Don’t look at me, I’m not an only child.”
Technically, Rowan and I were only cousins, but Rowan felt more like my younger sister. Probably because I’d lived with my aunt Bryn, Rowan’s mom, since my own mom died ten or so years ago.
The door at the back of the classroom swung open, and all the air got sucked out of the room. Professor Tarkington hobbled down the stairs of the tiered floors, gripping the railing like he was trying to strangle it.
“Open your textbooks to page two-hundred and eighty-three.” He yelled more than talked.
There was a flurry of shuffling as people pulled notebooks out of backpacks. The professor watched them all with a weary disinterest.
“Life. Energy. Magic.” His low, reedy voice drawled across his words. His silver hair was long, but his hairline had receded back to center-scalp. He spoke like a man trying to cancel out horse tranquilizers with decaf coffee. “What commonality do these precious entities share? Beyond their tendency to be misunderstood, I mean.”
The room was quiet. No one would make eye contact. Everyone was afraid of him.
Professor Tarkington sighed.
“None are ever given,” he said slowly. “And none are received. Life, energy, and magic are only ever borrowed, and ultimately, they are all returned to the universe. But, for casters such as yourselves, there are ways to control these powers as they pass between plains.”
He snapped his fingers. A dead mouse appeared on every student’s desk. Several people screamed. Kevin only lifted his eyebrows.
“Birth and death, these are restorative in nature,” Tarkington said.
The mouse sprawled across the rings of my notebook. Its little mouth hung open, tail curling on the paper. At least it didn’t stink.
“This energy, its life force, once borrowed, then used, now surrendered back into the ever-expanding cosmos,” Professor Tarkington continued in his monotone. “Today, we learn to harness this transmission of energy and control it.”
He snapped again. A palm-sized terracotta pot appeared next to the mouse. Green, fanning leaves poured over the edges like water.
“The life force of the fern is the life force of the mouse,” he said, glaring at each of us in turn. “Your task: read the spell on page two-hundred and eighty-three. Use the energy of the living fern to bring your dead rodent back to life. You have until the end of class.” He planted himself in the chair next to the chalkboard and gestured broadly with both hands. “Begin.”
We all looked at our mice.
Brown, tiny, big ears and a long tail. They were dirty and thin, bones poking up through their backs.
“Are we sure we want to put these things back in circulation?” Kevin asked, his ruddy eyebrows raised to his hairline. “I don’t think anyone’s complaining about fewer rats in the world.”
“They’re mice,” said Jupiter, “and they’re adorable.”
“They’re pests, Jupe,” Kevin corrected. “And they’re disgusting.”
“They’re babies.”
“They’re fully grown,” I said. Not that that was the issue here.
Jupiter and Kevin brought their mice to life in something like twenty minutes. Most everyone else followed within ten more.