"We just spent our morning mopping up a swimming pool worth of grape juice."

f.u.kimura sloshed over to the sink, removed his shoes and socks, and started rinsing them out.

"Well," Sadie offered, "at least it wasn't as stinky as the paella."

Maria glared at her. "Oh, sure. Fine. You always bring that up. 'At least I'm not as bad as Maria.'"

"That's not what I-"

"b.i.t.c.h! I hate you," Maria screamed as she stormed out of the door.

Roster shrugged. "That paella was some stank-a.s.s s.h.i.t."

Sheila joined f.u.kimura at the sink. She dumped a pint of my juice product out of her left boot. "I hate the start of the year," she grumbled.

I looked around guiltily. "Sorry guys. My bad," I said.

"It wasn't bad, Dieter!" Sadie said from her new secure position behind my bed. "It was a success! A triumph! And on your first try too. It's a testament to my totally rockin' talent as a teacher," she said, beaming.

"No," Monique said, "it means that instead of pillow time, the entire squad got to spend the morning mopping up the bas.e.m.e.nt. And...and...why the h.e.l.l are you both in the hospital? I mean, my G.o.d, look at you two, you're like two little smurfs."

"Yea, well you see, the circle was filling with juice, and we were drowning, and I had to get to the threshold, so I set off a minor explosion and-"

"A minor explosion," Monique sputtered in horror.

"Nice," Roster said. He gave me a thumbs up.

"Dieter, you should be careful employing explosives underwater," Sheila added. "If you refer to the Navy Diving-"

"Enough!" Monique shouted. "Sadie, you're fired. No more training Dieter."

"But he's my star pupil!" she moaned.

"If I leave you two alone, you're probably gonna unleash the Marshmallow Man on downtown New Haven. No way. No how. Dieter, you're with Jules from now on. Her parents run an elementary school in Ireland. You two are a perfect fit. And no more casting. We take you through the basics first, bookwork and observation only. You got that, Jules?"

Jules frowned. "You want me ta teach the nutto? Monique, I was gonna TA this year."

Monique glared at her.

Jules pushed the drooping pair of golden-brown spectacles back onto her nose and sighed.

"Got it," she muttered. Her hair was even frizzier than yesterday.

Monique turned to me.

"Yes, ma'am," I replied quickly. "No more casting till you say so." I thought being a mage was supposed to be fun.

Chapter 19.

WOODWORKS.

Sadie and I got out of the hospital two days later. Cla.s.ses had already started, so I was already way behind. Life got real simple. Every morning I was up at eleven and out the door after a quick breakfast. Three hours of Standards started at noon. I picked English Composition, 20th Century American History, and Introduction to Molecular and Cell Biology because I knew I could ace them. The Standards were great. They gave me plenty of time to catch up on my sleep.

After Standards, I got an hour off for what everyone lovingly called linner. Each afternoon you could count on hearing Sadie and the rest of the Linnerets (some sort of school tradition-don't ask) singing, "It's not quite lunch / it's not quite dinner / you won't get thinner-but there's fruit punch!"

Personally, I believed afternoons were best-spent unconscious on a hammock, but the good stuff followed linner, so I would pound down a liter of coffee to stave off the impending food coma and rush off to an hour of Magic Theory I with Dr. Greenberg. Magic Theory was a kind of catch-all of the science behind conduits, circles, frames, leylines, and alchemy. Most of the students thought the topics were beneath them, but I sat at the front of the cla.s.s burning through the notebooks. Basic Defensive Magic was next. It was equal parts the Art of War and spellcasting. I was struck by how many inventive ways the Conscious had developed to pierce, slash, burn, freeze or otherwise trans.m.u.te their foes. It made me want to go out and buy some pepper spray.

My last cla.s.s of the day was Introduction to the Political Science of Magic, or Polimag for short. Polimag was a total snore. Professor Simons droned on in a steady monotone. He was like an inner tube leaking air. Words slid out one after another, and the concepts melted together like chocolate in the midday sun. Were we talking about tort or a law? Was it an edict or a verdict? Who knew? Who cared? Serpentine tangents were the norm. Caffeinated beverages outnumbered students two-to-one. I spent half my time in the book's index looking up arcane terms and hastily scribbling them in my notebook. It was hopeless. One day I went thirty minutes thinking the Department of Mana Affairs had signed a treaty with the US Navy SEALs to not throw out dried bread in the forest only to discover that SEAL was actually spelled SEELIE, and that while Navy SEALs were as tough as nails, forest Seelie could be killed by them. The only thing that made Polimag bearable was Dante. We sat together in the back, and he taught me some basic illusions like shroud-the-pencil and thumb-through-the-ear. I sucked terribly-my illusions only held for a second or two-but it was a great way to pa.s.s time.

After cla.s.ses ended at 7PM, most of my fellow first-years got to go and hang out. Maybe they grabbed a coffee. Maybe they hit a bong. (You know, college stuff.) The first semester coursework was designed to get everyone on the same page. A lot of the material was old hat to them. Their biggest concern was pa.s.sing biology. The first semester was a time to join a few clubs, summon a few demons, and get plastered. I wasn't so lucky...

Jules Nelson was a tyrant, and I, her humble serf.

Every single day Jules Nelson would be standing outside of Central. She'd be wearing one of her dreary chalk-stained dresses wrapped up in an Elliot robe, books in one hand, notebooks in the other, blond curls going every which way. Every single day she'd adjust her gla.s.ses, say, "Right then, Dieter, off to the library witya," and drag me to said h.e.l.lhole.

Every. Single. Day.

Jules liked Structure.

Jules liked Repet.i.tion.

Jules liked Consistent Results.

From seven to nine we sat in the library and studied our coursework. This was followed by a trip to the cafeteria for plastic wrapped sandwiches. Our thermoses filled-mine with coffee and hers with a half milk, half Darjeeling concoction Jules called a "cupan tae"-we headed off into the forest behind the dorms. Once we entered the forest, I had to follow Jules closely. We were headed to a place past students had nicknamed the Woodworks. The Woodworks was particular about the type of company it kept. If I didn't stick to within an inch of Jules' robe, I would end up straying off into the darkness. The Woodworks found Jules kosher-but me? Me it sent into mud puddles.

That's hallowed ground for you. They're like the ATM machines of the magical world: oft sought but rarely found. Such dark places want to be left be, but we mages want to find them. Mana flows differently within their borders, altering which spells can be cast. Each hallowed place makes certain magiks easier and other magiks harder. Each hallowed place has its own groupies. The Woodworks was suited for healing crafts; another site on the opposite side of campus was great for enchantments. Individual hallowed places really only share one thing in common: they absolutely hate visitors.

So how are hallowed places found in the first place? Every once in a while, a lucky someone is granted entrance. Most of the time they don't even realize it. Sure, they sense something's odd. The colors are a bit unusual, the air a bit too still, but they merely scratch their head and move on. And yet the memory sticks with them. Years later, the experience still seems vaguely important. Jules says that's because they've been offered an invitation. The ground had something to show them, something important, something life altering, but they missed it. Still, even if the poor soul saw whatever they were destined to see, they probably wouldn't be able to comprehend it's meaning. Hallowed places have their own logic. Few mortals can ever hope to grasp it.

The same was true for this small circle of gra.s.s before us. It was an opening in the trees just large enough to allow the stars to poke through to say h.e.l.lo. Why had no trees bother to grow here? No one knew. Who first discovered it? No one knew. Had it always been here? No one knew. It was the Woodworks. It was a piece of land that had pinched itself off from the rest of reality. It just was. That was that. I didn't find that explanation very satisfying, but not knowing was a big part of my life now.

Approaching the s.p.a.ce, I took Jules' hand and we squeezed through the taut air. Clear of the threshold, I walked over to the moss covered picnic bench and put down my pack. As Jules spread out her supplies and shined her long polished reed, I set up the gas lamp and adjusted the flame. When it was to her liking, she would turn to me and nod. Sure as sure, she would say, "Right then, Dieter, let's get on wit it," and we would get to work.

Jules had started her training when she was nothing but a toddler. The Dru commit none of their knowledge into writing. Everything has to be pa.s.sed down from mother-to-daughter or father-to-son. The process started before you even learned to walk. You became one link in an unbroken chain of knowledge that stretched back over a thousand years.

Jules referred to mana as "Awen," the Dru word for flowing spirit. To Jules, mana wasn't just a substance to be molded; it was the living embodiment of a G.o.d-like ent.i.ty that danced through our lives. During the first few weeks of school, I learned there wasn't a single path to becoming a mage, nor was there even one right way to cast a spell. Only one thing was consistent across the many schools of magic: the root of all spellmaking was the formation of a mental image. The clarity of that image, and the amount of focus you could commit to forming it, were the key components to a spell's effectiveness. Conviction was what mattered most. Beliefs, rituals, drawings, songs, and faith could all help strengthen a mental image by fortifying a caster's resolve, and so the caster's culture, upbringing, and belief system strongly influenced their style. Jules' style was steady and methodical. My training followed suit.

After settling in, we would meditate for an hour to eliminate intrusive thoughts.

We were "cleaning the canvas," as Jules put it. "Imagine a parfect black sphere," she would say. "Move yer mind's eye around that dark globe like a satellite. Spin it. Admire its parfection. Eliminate everything else from yer mind..."

Sounds simple? Well try doing it for a moment. The crack of a branch, a rustling of leaves, any little thing would knock my focus. Jules didn't seem bothered when I bungled it. She just patiently repeated the instructions, and I would try spinning my little black brain ball yet again. The absence of attention, it was an esoteric concept. How can you ignore the events transpiring around you? How can you be of the moment rather than in the moment? Hour-after-hour, day-after-day, I pondered it. I meditated so much that I dreamt little black spheres.

Jules had smiled when I told her.

"When you can't recall dreamin' em you'll be ready, Dieter."

The weeks pa.s.sed, and I began to improve. The absence of thought became familiar, less abstract. The nothingness arrived quicker when I called for it. I realized that Sadie had been right. Moving mana required talent, you couldn't get around that, but mana could only be refined into something useful through an insane amount of practice. You needed to learn the basics so thoroughly that you didn't even have to think about them. Then and only then could you step up to the greater challenge of preparing a trans.m.u.tation. Nothing in my life had ever come free. I found magery was no different. I took comfort in that. It meant I could earn it.

After our meditation sessions, Jules conducted her a.s.signments alone. My role was simple. I just sat tight and observed. But watching wasn't easy. When I told Jules about my Sight, she didn't respond with Sadie's indifference. She called my Sight auraception, and she wanted me to strengthen it. While Jules worked, my job was to will open my Sight and keep it focused for longer and longer periods of time.

"'Fraid pain is gainful on this one, Dieter," she'd said. And Jules was right. Holding my Sight open was incredibly taxing. I got juicy headaches, and from time-to-time throughout the night, I would have to return to the meditation exercises Jules taught me to regain my focus. Exerting my Sight was painful, but watching Jules work was worth it.

Jules' craft was altogether different from the magic I'd seen so far. She didn't use her body to conduit mana. Instead, Jules cast using circles. And she didn't just work one magic circle at a time. Jules' works.p.a.ce consisted of three stone circles resting against one another to form a shape called a trefoil. The three circles served as the entrapment fields of the Druid style. The three circles touched at three distinct points. To the Dru, these three points represented the times of transition: sunrise, solstice, and equinox. These points served as three independent sites of trans.m.u.tation. Because the three circles didn't overlap, there was a gap formed at the center of the trefoil. This was Jules' works.p.a.ce. It served as the black canvas onto which she painted her craft.

Jules explained that she too could cast by forming a conduit within herself, but that she avoided it like the plague. Jules disliked the instability of the human body. She argued that it always contaminated your trans.m.u.tations to some degree. Thinking back to my previous experiences, I could see her point. Simply noticing Sadie's juice box had corrupted my own simple mana extraction to terrible effect. With Jules' method, that risk was eliminated. You could draw up mana, generate conduits, and cast spells while keeping them free from mental contamination. Better still, the Dru style let Jules focus on each component of a spell independently. After completing a component, you could just step away from it, leaving it humming like a car in neutral. Only after the three entrapment fields and three trans.m.u.tation points were completely tuned did Jules began the chant that un-dammed the flows. Her style afforded tremendous control and gave Jules the confidence to practice a craft that many others remained wary of-casting on life. On the first night of my apprenticeship, Jules explained the risks: "Listen now, Dieter. Life's a fragile balance. Any organism-even the simplest worm-is an incredibly complex array of movin' parts. Squelch the flow of nutrients, compress a nerve, or disrupt the flow of air and the symphony we call life will come a crashin' down around ya. Destroyin' flesh is fockin' easy. There's a million ways to wreck a body. Just stick a wrench in here or there and you'll be splatterin' guts everywhere. For that same reason, any endeavor seekin' to improve a body's function, or repair a body's damage, is an imposin' feat."

"Fine," I replied. "I'll buy that, but how do you manage the risks?"

"It is like fixin' a car's engine as it's a speedin' down the highway," she mused. "There can be no half-measures. No false starts. Actions must be precise and executed with conviction. The best way is to execute all the interventions instantaneously. If ya achieve all yer objectives in one fell swoop, ya eliminate the most nasty variable of all: time."

I scratched my head. "Okay, but how on earth do you do everything at once?"

"Aye, Dieter, that's the crux. The problem lies with the human mind. It's the limiting factor in all casting. No matter how sharp yer noggin', ya cannot possibly moderate the manaflows, execute trans.m.u.tation after trans.m.u.tation, and apply the treatments fast enough in series. You'll reach the limit of usin' yerself as a conduit well before ya cure what ails the patient. So the answer be simple: Stop usin' yer cluncky self as the conduit. Prepare all the components in advance. Hit 'em with everything at once."

I gestured at Jules' trefoil. "So in exchange for taking more time in the setup, you're able to execute a spell that no one could ever achieve using only their body as a conduit?"

"That's along the right lines, Dieter, but yer thinkin' be too narrow. A single complex spell? Me style uses three points of trans.m.u.tation. Usin' a trefoil, I can cast three complex spells simultaneously."

"Okay, I'll give it to ya, that's pretty cool, Jules."

"Of course it be pretty cool, Dieter," she said smiling. "The Dru saved civilization, after all."

And so it went night after night. Meditation and observation. Learning the craft without so much as casting a spell. I wanted to try my hand at my own, but Jules would have none of it. A month pa.s.sed. Another. Summer died away. We traded our thin summer robes for more substantial woolen ones. As the intensity of my studies increased, hours past like minutes. Work occupied all my time. I gave up any hope of a normal social life. I joined no clubs. I read nothing but textbooks. I knew the neighborhood squirrels better than I did my dormmates. I stopped reading the paper. Didn't pay heed to any of the rumors. All the concerns of the world dissolved from my mind. I was a machine with one concern: I'd catch them. I'd catch them, and I'd pa.s.s them.

At the start of October, Monique gave the go ahead for me to start casting again. Lambda threw me a Madonna party. Sadie mixed spiked Shirley Temples while Roster sang, "Like a Virgin / Casting for the very first time." The whole group hung out into the wee hours of the morning. I had a blast. It was the first party I'd been to since I started school.

Jules started my casting slow. I would manage setting up the circles' extraction points as Jules worked on the more complex trans.m.u.tations. To charge circles, the goal was to extract a set amount of very pure mana and trap it inside. Drawing mana from the leyline was easy for me-I had shown a natural predilection for it-the challenge was keeping the mana pure and in control.

Purity required an empty mind. Mental images could contaminate the flow and render the mana worthless for the larger spell. The meditation techniques Jules had me practicing daily came into play here, and those sessions were paying off. Within a week, I was getting it right about half the time.

"Good enough for a grub," Jules said.

Quant.i.ty was the larger problem. Each part of Jules' spells required a set amount of mana. Like in baking, quant.i.ties were critical. Where my natural ability to collect mana made setting up extraction fields simple, it worked against me here. Jules said I was like the volume control on an airplane headset. I had two settings: Very Hi and Very Low. Even three weeks in, Jules had to go through all my circles and bleed off mana. But I was learning, I was getting better, and that was good enough for me.

Chapter 20.

RED ALERT.

I blew breath over my freezing hands. It was 2AM in the morning, one week before Halloween, and Jules and I were hovering over a rose bush.

"Cut it clean, Dieter."

"Stars above, Jules. I'm using shears, how could I not cut it clean?"

"Oh, you'll find a way. I'm sure a'that ya butcher."

I snipped off the stem and took a knee.

"For you, my love. A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet as your feet."

Jules smacked me on the back of the head.

"Oi! Cut the c.r.a.p, Dieter. Put the rose in the works.p.a.ce and get ta the extractions. The longer we wait the harder it'll be ta re-fuse."

I rubbed my freezing fingers together. Tonight's a.s.signment was to graft a cut rose back onto it's stem. The dean had handed Jules and I this special a.s.signment in place of helping with Lambda's Man-Dough project. If we could re-fuse a rose, maybe with fifty years more work, we could re-attach an arm like the pros did for Susan Collins. Fixing plants is much easier than fixing folks. Veggies are resilient. They don't mind if you accidently lop off a few leaves. Humans? Not so much.

Tonight, I was in charge of setting up the extraction fields, and as usual, volume control was an issue. Standing over the first circle, I tried for the nice steady strand of mana sweeping through the ground below me. I came up with the Big Whopper instead. The power surged, and the circle groaned in protest. Dust started whipping up around me. I struggled to dump the flow, but I was too slow about it. The surge cascaded into the adjacent trans.m.u.tation where Jules was working. The surge overloaded it, the spell ruptured, and Jules jumped backwards as the field discharged where her face had just been. Her robe kicked up of the ground and blew over her head.

"Fockin'aye, Dieter!" she exclaimed.

I had no energy to spare on a response. I was still struggling to force the ma.s.sive boulder of mana back into place. The rose at the center of the trefoil withered to dust. The blades of gra.s.s around it doubled in size.

"Awen's Ghost..." Jules eyed the bizarre trans.m.u.tation. "You're about as delicate as Shiva."

"A little bit of help?" I asked through a grimace.

"Aye. Aye." Jules hustled over to bleed the flow.

A beautiful stream of flame sprung from her hand into the night air.

"Oooh, violet," I remarked, watching the brilliant purple geyser soar high above the tree line. "That's a new color, right?"

Jules looked at me in exasperation. "That it is, Dieter. And you know what? That's officially the last color in the fockin' rainbow. I've diffused so many of yer near disasters that I've mastered every last hue."

"Maybe you should try for a rainbow next time. We could lure a Leprechaun. Get us some gold."

Jules planted her hands on her hips. Her ill-fitting spectacles slid down to the tip of her nose. "Haven't you been doing yer readings? Like we would want to be attracting one a'them shysters."

"Oh. Right." Leprechauns had a rather bad reputation for mischief. They did little stuff like swipe your bankcard and liquidate your a.s.sets. Professor Simons estimated that they were responsible for at least half the ident.i.ty thefts in the United States alone. To me, Leprechauns seemed rather harmless. Then again, I had nothing worth stealing.

Jules began ma.s.saging her temples. "Dieter, that'll be enough for tonight. We're out of roses-and I need a drink." Jules walked to the edge of the clearing and yanked the tarp off a collection of tanks and tubes, grabbed two plastic cups, and after a few pumps of a plunger, filled them full of imported Irish ale. It had taken Jules some doing to get a keg of her hometown ale shipped all the way across the Atlantic, but Ms. Nelson was nothing if not persistent.

"But, milady, what of the purity of yer vessel?" I asked in my best Irish accent.

"Dieter Resnick, any hope of purity died when you arrived on the scene," Jules replied in a perfect Midwestern drawl.