Page 14 of Soulmates

“We need to talk about this fucking challenge.”

“We need to do nothing. You need to get out of my doorway.”

“No. Something has gone fantastically fucking wrong, and you need to help us fix it. Now.”

“Wrong how?” Forrester asked while maintaining his scowl.

“Um, Jake tried to kill me, then…like…hump me?”

“Dude!” Jake squawked.

“Well!”

“Tried to kill you? Why? Fucking hell, just come inside.” Forrester gestured with a level of frustration that would have been impressive on any other night. Maddox stalked inside, dragging Jake behind him into Forrester’s surprisingly ordinary living room. If you ignored the weird clocks and other…gadgets.

Maddox might have spent hours investigating the various magical devices the dean had, but he couldn’t even muster enough interest to give them more than a cursory glance.

They told the dean the story of the night, starting with the first challenge task, including the explosion they still couldn’t explain, haltingly going through Jake’s murderous chase through the forest, the fireflies, the howl of an animal, all ending on his doorstep. The dean didn’t interrupt once.

When they were done, Forrester sat back and looked them both up and down, gaze pausing on their linked hands.

Finally, he spoke. “Jake, may I see your phone?”

“It won’t turn on,” he said as he passed it over. “We tried that.”

Forrester took it and waved his hand over it. An orange glow passed between his palm and the screen. The phone powered on.

“This Gods-be-damned challenge! Every year, something insane happens, and still, it persists. Fucking shit.”

Maddox barked out a hysterical laugh. “It’s your fucking challenge. If it’s insane, stop doing it, and while you’re at it, how about you fix Jake?”

“It is not my challenge. It has never been my challenge.”

“It’s your school, Dean Forrester. Or do I have the title wrong?”

“My school?” he said with a wry, humorless laugh. “Maddox, you have been here five years. You’ve known me for five years. What in your time here would lead you to believe that I would put a student in danger? Let them die at twenty-three years old?”

Maddox thought about that, and Forrester was right. He was weird. He was drunk sometimes. But cruel? No. He wasn’t that and never had been.

“So whose challenge is this?”

“The school’s.”

“But you said it—”

“I am the dean, Maddox. I am an employee. The school belongs to the board.”

“Well, who is the board?”

“Your father, for one,” Dean Forrester said as he stood and crossed the floor to the bar.

“I…”

“Ah, yes. Of course you don’t know. Why would you?” Forrester poured himself a generous glass of amber liquid and crossed back to his seat. “You are the future upper echelon of the magic community. Not the current.”

“Maddox,” Jake spoke for the first time in what felt like a long time. “Your research. You know things aren’t right. You know it.”

“Of course you know it. You are neither fools nor power mongers.” Forrester drained his glass and got up for another. As he sat the bottle back down, he seemed to reconsider and brought it back with him. “These challenges are supposed to parse out the weak. They do not. They only entangle some unlucky few students into failure and sometimes…death. And that I cannot fix.”

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