Page 59 of Monster's Delight

I giggled. “He is. And he doesn’t seem to notice. The girls in my class all daydream about him.”

Ms. Carlisle smiled. “Not you?”

“Not me.” I didn’t go into details, and she seemed to understand that I was done with the subject, because she looked back at my notes.

“You’ve got everything right so far. Although your note here, about checking on using mint instead of ivy...” she trailed off, staring into the distance again. “Never, ever have mint anywhere near a disjunction spell. The effects are deadly,” she finished seriously.

My eyes widened. “Wow. Thank you. I’ve never heard of such an effect from a simple switch like that!”

“I haven’t heard of many others. Most of them aren’t taught at the academy for that exact reason. I still think that the warning should be mentioned though.” She smiled slightly. “I did my thesis on disjunction magic. It should be in the library, if you need more information for your essay.”

“Thank you, I’ll look for it,” I said absentmindedly.

She patted my shoulder, slurping noisily at her drink. “Have a good afternoon, dear. Remember me to your grandfather, won’t you?”

“The next time I talk to him,” I promised.

I’m not sure how much longer I continued my note-taking, but eventually Aiden came up behind me.

“You’ve been working too hard,” he said.

“I’m trying to solve your grandmother’s death,” I replied. “Lifting the suspicion off my grandfather and giving your family closure, it’s kinda important.”

Aiden sighed. “I feel like we’ve hit a dead end.”

I ignored the pun. I was sure it wasn’t intentional. “I want to make sure that mint wasn’t substituted for ivy at the last minute. Ms. Carlisle told me it was deadly in this sort of magic.”

“I think Ms. Carlisle was Grandmother’s roommate when they went to school here. She must have been heartbroken to hear about her death,” Aiden said thoughtfully. “You live four years with someone and you can’t help but grow close.”

I put my notes away and turned to face him. “What’s your roommate like?”

“Ugh.” Aiden scrunched up his nose. “I couldn’t stand him at first. All he wanted to talk about were women, getting drunk, and how we could sneak out. Fortunately, he mostly got over himself.”

I chuckled. “Sounds like he was a real character. You’re friends now?”

“I wouldn’t say friends.Friendly, but not like your little group. You’ve got nice friends.” Aiden sighed and his shoulders slumped a little. “Maybe I shouldn’t have taken a gap year.”

I hugged him around his waist. “If you hadn’t, we might not have met. But I thought your roommate made your Halloween costume?”

Now it was Aiden’s turn to laugh. “Yeah, he did. He got top marks on it and everything.”

“I’m not surprised,” I replied. “So... If you don’t want to study, what do you want to do this afternoon? I skipped class for this. You’d better make it worth my while.”

Aiden smirked and hauled me to my feet by my elbows. “We’re going exploring. Come on.”

He led me out of the mess hall and down the stairs to the basement. “Which way?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

The pool was to the left, the library was directly in front of us, but I hadn’t bothered visiting the fitness rooms on the right before. “Right,” I said firmly.

“Great.” He took my hand and led me down the hallway. “For every decision in direction one of us makes, the other gets to ask a question. My question is, what do you want to do after you graduate?”

“Oh.” Honestly, I was surprised that he hadn’t asked before this.

Probably something to do with the fact that most of the time, we’re not talking.

“I want to travel and see the world. I want to do magic at nexus points and compare it to everywhere else. I want to find magical artifacts and study them before returning them to the culture that they belong to.” I stopped myself from saying more because Aiden was staring at me, his jaw open. “But I don’t want to be too far away from you, so maybe you’d want to come with me?” I asked hopefully.

“I’ve never heard anyone other than Professor Akhtar talk so... so...” He floundered for the right word.

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