Page 84 of Bonds of Magic
“I’m not recruiting people,” she said sharply. “I’m not marshaling an army or anything. But I hate to see potentialwasted.” She shook her head. “Honestly, I thought university classes here would be more challenging. But this first year’s been pretty boring—especially now that Erika’s gone.”
“Were you guys friends?” I thought back to the day I saw Rekha, Sean, and Tim talking to Valeria.
“Me and Erika?” Rekha sounded surprised. “Not at all. But she was smart. Now that she’s gone, there’s no one to compete with. It’s boring.”
“Felix is pretty smart,” I couldn’t help pointing out. “If you got to know him better, you might actually like him. At least you’d have someone to spar with.”
“Felix is a nephilim.” She said it like I’d suggested befriending a rabid polar bear. “I still can’t believe the dean let him into this school.”
“Fine, fine.” I raised my hands. “I was only trying to help.”
“Well stop trying. Anyway, Felix is too quiet. You can’t compete with someone who won’t open their mouth.” She glared at me. “None of this matters anyway. We’re supposed to be working onyou, not me. Did you sidetrack us on purpose?”
“I wouldn’t call discussing your prejudices ‘sidetracking.’ I’m pretty sure that’s actually a very important thing to talk about.”
“Disrespectfully, I disagree.” She flashed me a bright smile. “Now close your eyes, stick your hand out, and find your fucking center.”
“Right, becausethat’sgoing to help.” I closed my eyes but added, “You ever think I might be able to do this better if you didn’t actquiteso much like you think I’m useless.”
“Stop being useless and I’ll stop thinking that,” she retorted. “Now stop talking.”
“I’m just saying, you could stand to work on your bedside manner.”
“And you could stand to work on literallyanything. Honestly, I can understand the dean letting Felix in more than I can understand him admitting you. Even if you’re playing catch-up, you should be able to do something by now.”
Rekha’s words stirred the anger in my core that had never really gone away from this morning. The hurt of rejection. The sting of knowing Noah wanted someone else. The humiliation of thinking he and I could ever have anything.
I attempted to clear my mind and ‘find my fucking center,’ but it was hard when she kept talking.
“I swear, the standards here are way lower than they should be. First, they have faculty members who should have been put out to pasture ages ago. Then someone breaks through the wards, a student dies, and we still don’t have any answers? I seriously doubt Erika fell to her death. But if someone wanted to kill a freshman, did they have to pick the one person in our class who was actually intelligent enough to be interesting?”
My anger at Rekha’s self-satisfaction and rudeness grew. I felt bad for her, sure, but that didn’t give her an excuse to be so bigoted, or be so convinced she was always right. Had anyone ever challenged her view of the world before?
“And no offense,” she continued, “but I really don’t see why you’re here. If you have any shred of magical ability, I’ve yet to find it. It would be kinder to send you home so you’re notconstantly confronted by your failures, you know? I mean, are you even actually a witch?”
Something inside me snapped. Her arrogance, her disdain, her endless opining about how pathetic I was set the fury inside me aflame.
“Maybe I’m fucking not,” I shouted, opening my eyes—only to see a tiny ball of light hovering above my palm.
I stared at it in shock. It was growing larger by the second. Was I really doing this? Was I making it happen? It didn’t make sense.
But I flashed a glance at Rekha, and she seemed as shocked as I was. This wasn’t some kind of trick from her.
“Are you serious?” she said, likeImight be trickingher.
Which pissed me off more. The light grew larger still. It was the size of a baseball, then a softball, then a basketball, andholy shit, I was really doing this. It was feeding off my anger. I could feel the energy flowing through me, amplified by my emotions.
The light was beachball-sized now, and I was starting to freak out. Not just that I’d made it happen, but that I didn’t know how to make it stop.
“What do I do?” I asked Rekha.
“Turn it off,” she said, her voice high-pitched. The light was two feet in diameter now. “Just will it to stop.”
How did I do that, though?Stop, I commanded the light internally. I tried to direct the thought to the place inside me where I felt magic flowing through like a current. But nothing happened.Stop. Stop.
“Stop!” I yelled out loud, and the light exploded, sending sparks shooting through the air. The sparks reached me, then Rekha, then the bookcases all around us, the ceiling and the carpet. They burned as they touched my skin, hot enough that I looked for scorch marks. I didn’t see any, though, and when the sparks disappeared, all I saw were a few singe marks on the spines of the books around us.
The alcove seemed even dimmer in their absence. I stared at Rekha in surprise, and her face mirrored the feeling right back at me.
