“But the meeting, it went well?” Will asks me.
As I walk, cutting a path through the winds and feeling the eyes of the I look out at the slowly rising sun. Walking from my apartment building to the main offices and classrooms is not as nice as some of the walks around here, and when it’s by way of the entertainment district coffee shops, it is nearly to the point of irritatingly long. But I had an unscheduled meeting I had to get out of the way. “Adequately,” I answer him. Phone calls were frustrating, not being able to read people’s reactions, but I am meeting with a few new advisees today and he is frustratingly not available to walk and talk due to the rising sun. “I must admit, most of your friends are boring.”
“Not the meeting I was thinking about,” Will pushes. He’s asking about the meeting I just got out of. He doesn’t need to know anything about it, and yet he presses.
“I mean, I did also meet the most curious person in the train station, how did you guess?” I half jokingly reply.
He suddenly gets concerned. “Bad curious or good curious?” he asks.
I stop in front of the office building. “Curious curious,” I answer him, purely to amp up his concern levels. As my less than alive ally begins to make concerned noises on the other end of the phone, I add, “I am at my office. Talk to you more this evening.”
“Fine, but then I’m looking for more details,” he replies. I hang up the burner as he’s finishing his statement. No need to add any more information, and he would not be expecting it at this time. And I need to focus. Don’t want any curses on this burner, it wouldn’t be difficult to add some kind of spying subcurse to the standard masking curse they impose in their protection wards. I know, I’ve done that before. Stashing the burner inside the sidewalk tree to come back to later, I take a deep breath and head inside.
My office is on the fourth floor. It is my office. It used to be shared with another magister, Henry Griffin, but he decided to drop out from the program and pursue his mundane dreams in the music world. He’s got an unpaid job doing some production for a pop group he insists is just about to be huge. He is wrong, but I keep in touch. Because more ties into that world might prove useful, if he manages to find success. I unlock the door. It’s left almost exactly how I left it. No one stops by when I’m away, not maintenance, not my bosses. At least not without my permission. They know better. Not exactly the same, though. I smile thinly. Greatest Maestro Jonkers brought the packet by. Good. Leaving the door open, I head over to the desk.
The files aren’t as detailed as I would like, just quickly thumbing through them. But first looks can be deceiving, and I do not yet have time to analyze them fully. I unlock the desk drawer and open it. Innocuous papers, seemingly notes on my thesis. Pressing on the underside, there is a small gap, it lifts the floor of the drawer. I slide this packet in on top of the others there. Then I drop the drawer’s floor, close the drawer, and lock it. My freshmen should be showing up soon enough.
Before they make it in, Olivia Mascone comes in. “I don’t appreciate being followed,” she tells me, her voice even but clearly angered.
“Then be better at avoiding it,” I reply equally flatly. She isn’t really mad at me, we both knew I would be following her.
She shakes her head. “Don’t do it again,” she says, “Or I’ll figure out why and how you had Maestro Gomez eaten.”
We both know that’s an idle threat. Not because she wouldn’t follow through with it, but because she is going to be looking into that situation no matter what I do. “Ricardo is dead? How horrible,” I reply, unconvincingly.
She stares at me. I stare back. The silence sits around us, neither breaking. Then there is a knock on the door. “Sorry, don’t mean to interrupt,” the meek voice of one of the new ones says from the doorway.
“You aren’t,” Miss Mascone says.
“Have a good day, and good luck, Apprentice Mascone,” I tell her as a polite dismissal.
She smiles thinly and nods. “And you, Magister Scott.” Not letting me get another word in, Olivia Mascone turns on her heel and walks out briskly. No emotion showing to the newcomers.
“Come in,” I say to the new freshmen. They take a moment, clearly confused by Olivia’s exit, or general presence.
“What was that about?” the same meek voice as before asks as he enters. Clearly they elected him leader. Samson Haynes. 18. Relatively local, though his father is a Magister who isn’t really a part of the organization anymore. Taught some magic, but also scared to use it. One of the problems with those who grew up with knowledge of the mystic world’s danger and without the protections of a true community. Won’t be useful to me, unless he joins his father in graduating to the real world. But we will see if he develops.
“When my door is open, it’s open. Apprentice Mascone learned something over the summer she was concerned about.” My answer is straightforward. Like many freshmen, they try to read more meaning from it.
“Anything we should also be concerned about?” One of them asks. Dana Najjar. 19. Found the world, wasn’t born into or near it. Will be dedicated to learning. Until or unless he gets sidetracked.
I look at Miss Najjar coldly. “Almost certainly,” I say. “Now, the reason I wanted this meeting is to get to know you, and more importantly for you to get to know one another.”
“You’re just going to breeze right past ‘almost certainly’?” Samson says, starting to get more bold.
“Yes,” I answer him. Then I return to my introduction. “I am Magister Therese Scott. You have the distinction of being my advisees.”
“Is that a bad thing? You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Samson says. So he wasn’t getting bolder. He just feels the need to fill empty air. Unfortunate.
For the first time since they’d walked in, Keighley spoke up. “It is, and it isn’t.” Keighley Adkins. 21. College graduate. As far as I was aware, she only recently discovered the mystic, though she’s been tangentially related to it for a while. But she is staring through me. She knows of me. She has real contact with someone who knows me. Rare. I missed something anomalous. I’ll need to find that.
“What does that mean?” Dana asks her.
Miss Adkins shrugs. “It means, if we don’t make it good, it will be a problem. But if we do make the best of it, it could be a great thing.”
“Then we make the best of it,” Dana says. He wants it to be inspiring, or determined. It doesn’t come through.
I wait for them to finish before I continue. No one speaks up after the underwhelming call to action. “Over the next four years, you will be pressed to your limits,” I explain, “Our classes are not easy, they are not meant to be. You’ll learn things no one in the world understands, be able to shape reality itself. And if you try to learn all that, to do everything alone, you will fail. Around here failure might mean the same thing as anywhere else. It also might mean death. So I’d highly suggest not trying to do anything by yourself.”
They look at one another then at me. As they don’t ask any questions, I continue. “You may have met friends during orientation, back when you were Prospectives. You also will likely meet others when you eventually start your classes. But the people in this room should be your most reliable support system.”
“Really?” Samson asks, “Because, no offense, but I met a couple of awesome people in that weird ceremony thing and we found out we’re going to be in the same theory class, so we’re going to make a study group together.” He quickly looks at the other two and adds, “I can change that or ask them to add y’all, but I was just.”
“That is not what I meant,” I explain. I open up the unlocked bottom drawer of my desk and pour myself a glass of bourbon. Just like last year, I need to tap into my own stories to sell this. Which means sharing details of my life. That is never easy. I savor my first sip before I start the story. “Back when I was an Apprentice, I had many people I studied with, depending on the class. And one of my fellow advisees had a consistent study group he rarely if ever worked outside of. But we grew to confide in one another because we had to, because we were forced to by someone like me. So when he had some family things that came up, he didn’t go to his girlfriend, he didn’t go to his study partners. He came to me. And, without questioning the reasons, I helped him figure out a solution and go through with it. Because I knew he’d do the same if I’d come to him.”
They seem to take in what I’m saying so I press it home. “So, you should go and have your study groups, your friends outside of this room. But know this: now, and every single time I have the opportunity for the next two years, I’ll be forcing you to work together and confide in one another. Commiserate about how terrible I am. Because one day you will need someone you trust to help you, to advise you, to listen to you. And we all know that won’t be me, and that won’t be the people who rely on your being put together or sociable. Might as well be each other.”
Keighley leans in, leaning onto my desk, taking the lead from Samson, who’s still thinking about my theory. “You’re in this room, too? Should we trust you?”
I let her see a hint of a thin smile. “I am only trusted by friends, the incredibly smart, and unfathomably foolish. So long as you are certain you are not the latter, feel free to trust me.” Anyone who is certain they aren’t foolish is a fool. And one should never trust someone they don’t know. Trust that people you know are always who you know them to be. Any other trust is setting yourself up for failure. “But even if you don’t trust me, you can rely on me,” I tell them honestly the other half of the unspoken lesson my father taught me. Because trusting someone is not always the right move. But just because you can’t trust someone doesn’t mean you can’t rely on their aid.
Keighley looks back at the others and Samson takes over once more. “Okay, so you just called us in here to tell us to work together?” he asks.
“No,” I explain, “We also have a meeting tomorrow at six thirty a.m. in the library. There you’ll meet my other advisees.”
“If we want to get in touch outside of your office hours,” Dana asks a question not on anyone’s mind, “Any preference on how?”
I look blankly at him. “Yes. Don’t.” I let that hang in the air.
“But, what if I can’t make office hours or something,” Dana presses. Stubborn. An unfortunate character trait that hopefully he grows out of.
“If you have trouble with my hours, you can tell me at an advisee meeting and I will change said hours the following semester,” I explain. I take a larger swig from the tumbler. “I do not live on campus, and I am rarely not busy.”
“Okay…” he says trailing off. They start to make their way out slowly.
“One minute, Keighley,” I request, standing up with my drink.
She stops and turns around. “Yes?” she asks.
“Considering we’ve never met, what do you have against me?” I wonder.
She waits for the others to leave the office before answering quietly. “You kind of slept with my old girlfriend. Debatably while we were technically still together.”
I raise an eyebrow. I don’t recall doing that. She adds, “Val.”
I take a drink and shake my head slightly. “No, Irene slept with her. She tried to seduce me, but I make better decisions than some of my proteges.”
“Are you saying dating Val was a bad decision?” she asks, stepping at me and no longer speaking quietly.
“Yes. She is going to murder one of her girlfriends, one of these days.”
I can tell from the look behind her eyes, despite her facade of offense, she agreed with me. She shakes her head and storms out. She’ll feel the need to tell me when she eventually decides to admit it. I can wait.
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