Page 16 of Reluctant Wizard

Now no one even met her eyes. Invisibility cut both ways: both a comfort and a cold slice to the heart. She had a choice between equally unpleasant options: find an empty table, and good luck with that; quietly slip into a seat at the empty end of an occupied table and pretend along with everyone else that she didn’t actually exist; or brazen her way into a group and shame them into publicly acknowledging her existence. That last absolutely wasn’t going to happen, as Alise was so not up to anything requiring the least bit of fortitude, let alone brazen courage.

In fact… The thought of the other two options curdled her stomach sufficiently that the fragrant breakfast that had made her salivate only moments before now smelled nauseating. Oh well, she didn’t have that much time anyway. She could skip eating and instead retrieve her class schedule and maybe figure out what to tackle next on the mountain of past-due coursework material. Taking her tray to the clean-up station, she set it down, retaining only the infinitely precious cup of coffee.

“I don’t think so.”

Alise nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of Cillian’s voice right beside her. Giving her a dark look, he picked up her tray before it slid into the chute where earth elementals eagerly waited to devour anything organic, and started walking. Then he paused and glanced back at her. “Come. Sit. Eat.”

“Woof,” Alise replied sourly and the reproving look he gave her wasn’t amused either.

“I waved,” he said pointedly. “You looked right at me.”

And clearly thought she’d ignored him on purpose, as opposed to being willfully blind to everyone in that room because she was too fragile to withstand the shunning. Not at all wanting to explain that, she muttered something about being tired and blurry vision.

He thunked her tray down on the end of a partially occupied table, his own mostly empty tray there. The people at the other end of the table appeared to be lower-level faculty like Cillian, younger and no one Alise knew well. A couple of them nodded at her absently before returning to their conversation. Cillian had a pile of his things on the chair beside him, which he moved and dumped under his seat with his typical disregard for any of his possessions that weren’t books, and pointed at her to sit.

He’d clearly been saving the seat for her—completely disregarding their conversation of the night before—and Alise plopped herself down, though careful of the precious coffee she still clutched, agitated and uncertain. It annoyed her no end that he acted like nothing had changed between them and expected to have breakfast with her, and at the same time it moved her immeasurably that at least one person wanted her to sit with them. Sure, Cillian was faculty and not a student, but he also had good reason to never want to talk to her again.

Abruptly weepy and dreadfully embarrassed that Cillian might see, Alise stared fiercely at her eggs. They’d looked so delicious when she heaped them on her plate, along with the buttered toast with honey and stewed grains. Now she worried she wouldn’t be able to swallow them through a throat vising with emotion. What a mess she was. You’re just tired, she told herself.

“Staring at your food won’t get it inside where it will do you good, Alise,” Cillian said gently, far more so than she deserved after she’d been so unkind to him.

You were mean to him for good reasons, she reminded herself. He can’t be involved, so buck up and deal.

Firming her resolve and not looking at him, knowing that looking into his warm black eyes would undo her, she forked up some eggs and made herself chew and swallow. She barely got them past the knot in her throat. Her achingly empty stomach lurched when the food hit it, acid rising up like steam when water hits hot oil. But she held it down and, feeling defiant, shot Cillian a triumphant glare.

He didn’t see, however, instead paying attention to digging something out of the worn satchel he’d tossed under the chair only moments before. “I found something interesting for your independent study,” he was saying, speaking loudly enough for the other faculty at the table to hear, rather pointedly reminding her they had an audience and that Alise, at least on record, still reported to him as her study supervisor.

Since she didn’t trust herself to answer, Alise shoved another fork-load of eggs into her mouth, following up with a bite of the honeyed toast. Her stomach seemed to be getting on board with the concept of food and settling down to get to the business of digesting, sending up enthusiastic invitations for more. She took a deep swallow of coffee, sighing at the warmth hitting her belly and resulting tingles of energy prodding her tired mind.

“Better?” Cillian inquired too quietly for anyone to overhear.

“Fine, thank you, Archivist,” she answered with formal neutrality. “You said you had something for me?”

“I do, yes,” he replied with some of his usual enthusiasm, brandishing what looked like an index. “It occurred to me that, while some records might be entirely missing, seamlessly enough that their disappearance went undetected, that a tangential search, while it would consume more time, might reveal a forgotten cross-reference that…Alise? Are you listening? What’s wrong?”

What was wrong was Gordon Hanneil standing across from her, wizard-black eyes sharp as daggers.

~9~

Cillian watched as what little healthy color Alise had in her pale face drained away entirely. Her lovely black eyes that had already been shadowed in a way that made Cillian want to wrap her up in a soft blanket and hold her until she fell into much-needed sleep—never mind how inappropriate that would be—went haunted and bottomless in her taut face. He put a hand on her arm to catch her as she swayed in her seat, in case she actually fell.

“Alise?” he prompted, and followed her gaze to where she stared across the crowded dining hall. She looked as if she gazed into the abyss, like a monster lurked there, poised to devour her. But Cillian saw nothing. He even tried stretching his limited archivist-wizard’s senses to determine if something magical lurked there. Still nothing. But Alise was a far more powerful wizard and, more to the point, exceptionally talented in spirit magic, capable of detecting entities most wizards could not. “Is something there?” he asked in a lowered voice, squeezing her arm lightly to penetrate her stupor. “Something malevolent?”

She jumped in his loose grip, startling him with the violence of her reaction, her wide-eyed, panicked gaze flying to his. “No! Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Don’t you lie to me,” he bit out. “Tell me or I’m going over there.”

She swallowed hard, clearly frantic. “Please don’t. Please, Cillian.”

“Then tell me.”

“Don’t look though. The proctor,” she whispered. “Directly ahead. Staring right at us. At the end of the table.”

Confused, Cillian surreptitiously searched for who she meant. Several proctors monitored the dining hall, as usual, keeping tabs on the minds and emotions of the magic-bearing adolescents of varying ages, some powerful enough to level the building and a few quite capable of doing so in a fit of temper. He didn’t see anyone of note—and definitely no one standing where Alise’s gaze had been fixed. “The closest proctor I see is Wizard Divya, near the coffee pots.” And Alise wasn’t looking at her.

“Then you can’t see him,” she whispered, her expression crumpling in despair.

“Do you know his name? Or can you describe him for me?”

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