He yawned, lazily covering his mouth. “I think I’ll head upstairs. See if I can get back to sleep in bed. If not, I’ll come down for food in an hour.”
“Okay,” I said, hiding my disappointment. “I’ll pop over to the infirmary to visit Sin and check if Aaron and Kai are still there.”
“Probably not. They weren’t badly hurt.” He stood and stretched his arms over his head. His shirt rose a few inches, revealing a strip of bronze skin, taut abs, and the white scars that cut diagonally across his stomach. “I feel better than I have in weeks.”
“Hmm?” I mumbled distractedly, ogling his torso.
His sudden touch on my hair made me twitch. He tugged a tangled curl loose and settled it along the side of my face, where it belonged. His thumb brushed my cheek as he withdrew his hand.
“Thanks for keeping me company, Tori,” he murmured, a corner of his mouth lifting.
Cheek tingling and pulse jumping, I could only sit there like a brain-fried dummy as he crossed the room and disappeared into the hall. I blew out a long breath.
Stacking my things neatly on a corner of the sofa, I headed for the entrance hall. Brett had finished his shift, so it was Dominic who handed me my jacket. One of the two of them had cleaned it since this morning’s forest romp, and I thanked him profusely.
Shadows clung to the grounds as I entered the academy. I was getting pretty good at navigating the premises and found the infirmary after only one wrong turn.
“Hi,” Sin said unceremoniously as I plunked down beside her. “Can you please convince the healer I don’t need to be chained to this bed?”
“Doesn’t she want to keep you under supervision for twenty-four hours?” As Sin sighed in defeat, I glanced around, confirming it was just the two of us. “How are you doing? For real?”
Her gaze dropped to her lap and she twisted a handful of blankets. “Honestly? I’m terrified. There’s so little time.”
“Kelvin the Genius is the best, though,” I reminded her.
“Yeah.” She strangled the cotton fabric. “I’m scared, but I also feel … contaminated. I don’t really remember what happened after they dragged me away …”
Her voice trembled and I wrapped my arms around her shoulders.
“I …” Her throat moved in a swallow. “I can feel the wolf spirit.”
An icy prickle rushed down my spine. “You can?”
“I couldn’t at first, but the feeling is getting stronger. It’s this pressure in my chest, like something’s fighting to get out … something violent and hungry.” She shuddered, then turned her desperate, tear-filmed eyes to mine. “You and Aaron were both bitten and didn’t get infected.”
“We were only bitten once each.” I squeezed her reassuringly. “It isn’t your fault, Sin. You’re so strong. You’re still smiling despite everything. You’re braver than anyone.”
She sniffled, gripping my arm with cold fingers, then visibly pulled herself together. “Aaron and Kai were in here earlier. They stopped to say hello. Kai had a black eye.”
Ouch. That sucked, but lucky for him, his face was so perfect he probably still looked better than ninety percent of men.
“They were extremely vague about why they looked all beat up.” She waited to see if I’d explain, then puffed in annoyance. “Tobias came in as they were leaving. It wasn’t pretty.”
“What do you mean?”
“I couldn’t hear everything, but it sounded like Tobias had come to get Aaron for something off that itinerary. Aaron started shouting at his dad that he wasn’t going to any meetings or interviews until”—she blushed bright red—“I was safe.”
She cleared her throat, then added, “Aaron said a few other things too. He asked—or more yelled that his parents care more about shoving him in front of as many of their elite friends as possible than they do about spending time with him.”
I winced sympathetically.
“Then he stormed off, threatening not to come back next year,” Sin concluded sadly. “His parents seem so nice, but …”
But behind their niceness was family drama ugly enough that Aaron had left at eighteen and only visited once or twice a year. After Aaron and Kai’s fight, I was more than eager to get everyone back home to the Crow and Hammer.
“Any updates from Kelvin?” I asked.
She shook her head. “What he has to do isn’t easy. He’s testing the shifter for alchemic components that could’ve caused its increased strength. After that, he’ll have to choose—or possibly invent—a counter-potion to reduce the shifter’s power so that druidess can drag it out of me.”
That sounded downright impossible, but I wasn’t a transmutation expert.
We chatted for a few more minutes, then I gave her a lung-crushing farewell hug. As I left the infirmary, classroom doors opened, the final lesson of the day over. I maneuvered through the swarm of students until I reached a door in the auxiliary wing.
At my knock, the door cracked open and a blond head appeared. “Oh, hi Tori.”
“Hey Brian,” I greeted the apprentice alchemist. “Can I get an update?”
Yeah, I’d asked Sin already, but I wanted it firsthand.
Brian opened the door wider. Inside the spacious room, a counter was covered in … I wasn’t even sure. Arcana circles drawn in white chalk, containers of ingredients, vials and bottles of potions. Chemistry equipment—hot plates, beakers, burners with blue flames boiling liquids, and weirdly shaped glass vessels—gave the impression of an evil laboratory. A small black cauldron gushed orange steam.
Kelvin, his braided beard frizzy and his black apron stained, held a grimoire in one hand as he shook a beaker of thick jade liquid. Behind him on a table, a plastic sheet covered a lumpy shape I assumed was the shifter body we’d brought back that morning. I automatically started breathing through my mouth in case it stank.
Brian stepped into the hall and swung the door most of the way closed. “It’s … going. He’s identified some components but nothing that can explain the metaphysical transcendence.”
“The what now?”
“The physical transmutation,” Kelvin boomed, yanking the door open and almost knocking Brian over as he pushed through the threshold, “has infused the wolf spirit with unnatural strength. Not cell transmutation but something beyond it. Most likely, a shifter was transmutated and the spirit inside it absorbed the effects. Its host then died, and the now-enhanced spirit possessed Sin instead.”
“Yes,” Brian muttered. “That’s why the spirit is so powerful.”
“If I’m correct,” Kelvin continued, speaking right over the end of Brian’s sentence, “the alchemist behind these shifters is of rare genius. I know only a handful of master alchemists with the expertise to unravel the transmutation, let alone create it.”
“Are you one of those master alchemists?” I asked, unable to help my dry tone.
“Of course!” He shoved the jade liquid at Brian. “Negative result. Dispose of that and prepare for an activated alkali test.”
Brian took the beaker and hastened into the lab.