Page 85 of The Alchemists

“Either there’s somewhere else on campus with symbols like this—unlikely, given how well we know campus. Or⁠—”

“There’s more to the library than meets the eye. Literally.”

SEB

There were four hours every week when Conrad and his housemates were all reliably absent. Three of them occurred in broad daylight, when they—and most of campus—were in class. Neither Seb nor Lily was one to skip class, and thus their absence would be too suspicious.

The fourth hour occurred every Thursday evening, when Conrad was in his macroeconomics study group and the other three members had basketball practice. Tori had her eye on the basketball team, camera in hand for an imaginary blog post; Daphne—recruited by Lily—was keeping watch over Gemma and Braithwhite as she did homework and her companions tried to salvage their ever-sinking alchemy grade; and Asher was in the library, across the balcony from Conrad and his study group on the second floor.

One by one, the texts rolled in: Go. Go. Go.

“You ready?” Lily watched his hand disappear back into his pocket.

“Probably not,” she admitted with a passable rendition of a smile.

“Alas.” He brought the back of his hand to his forehead in a swoon.

“Time to get cracking,” she said, then laughed at her pun.

She started to turn, walking toward the apartment’s front door, and he caught her by the arm. Startled, her eyes snapped to his, and momentarily he saw that same trapped-animal instinct. The last stretch of low winter sun reached out and stroked rosy fingers through her hair, rendering it in filaments of perfect fire. The promise of a storm hung close in the air.

“Hey,” he said gently, “You’ve got this.” He tugged and she came willingly, relaxing against him to accept the kiss that he pressed to her lips.

His heart jackhammered as he sat down on the wooden guardrail and watched her walk across the road in the gathering dusk. If only they had one more person, he could have been there next to her, but someone needed to keep watch while she worked. Lily had given much thought to the method of ingress, but in the end the front door had been the only real option. Though she could break the wards at any point, it was much quicker for her to pick a lock than find her way through a window.

He focused his attention on the shimmer of Æther that limned the three sets of wards guarding the apartment. With the key to the cipher cracked—Conrad was so predictable—Abernathy’s Trigram fell almost faster than he could blink. Norrell’s Net took her through sunset, and he watched as her hands performed the complicated dance to unpick an Ætheric knot. Finally, the ward parted, losing its shape. Lily stood, flexing her fingers to work out the stiffness induced by the cold and the work.

She crouched again, drawing a tuning fork from her coat and striking it against the ground. She frowned at it. She struck it again. Then, in the faint vibrato that reached him, he could hear a deeper ebb and swell. He could barely see her, but he could see the Æther that surrounded her—she was shaking.

Seb left his perch and crossed the road. Lily barely looked up at him, eyes narrowed at the work before her.

“What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

He crouched next to her and took the tuning fork from her hand, setting it carefully on the ground. Then he took her trembling hands and cupped his own around them, blowing a warming cantrip into the chapel of her palms, and kneading her ice-block fingers. She raised her eyes to meet his, then leaned into him for one, two, three breaths. Then she steeled herself.

Once more, she struck the tuning fork against the ground, and this time it rang pure in an unshattered note full of magic. Following its clarion tone, she found the resonance of the ward and unraveled the seam, slipping her fingers into the crack and wrenching. It was only once she was finished that he realized he’d been holding his breath. She’d broken Vexiliar’s Polyhedral. He didn’t know anyone at Windermere, faculty included, who could have done it—not with the speed and finesse that she had. Seb was suddenly certain that she was the strongest Magician he’d ever met. She might think most of her power was coming from her mother’s bracelets, but he knew the aura of borrowed magic, and it was nowhere to be seen.

LILY

Sometimes wards had an alarm feature, but thankfully there’d been none in the signatures. Maybe it was beyond Hawleyhurst’s price point. Still, she held her breath as each ward cracked and as she swung open the door of the apartment. She gestured Seb in before her, and together they stepped into the darkened space. Her heart pinged against her ribs. She sweated into her coat, completely drained.

“How much time?” she whispered.

“It’s already been forty minutes.”

“Shit. We’ve got to work fast. I still have to close the wards too.”

They peered into the only bedroom on the main floor, and Seb shook his head. The stairs creaked as they ascended, and Lily reached for his hand. She knew the moment Seb identified Hawleyhurst’s room because he froze in the doorway, blocking her view. Beyond him was a room as unremarkable as the others. It was the room of a jock, with sports posters and pennants and none of the class of the tower suite. Above them, freezing rain began to spatter onto the roof.

“You don’t have to come in.” She squeezed his hand.

Seb considered. “I do. I really, really do.”

He stepped inside.

She hovered in the doorway as he spread the map on the bed, beginning the activation of the spell he’d prepared. He muttered the incantation under his breath in French, and she smelled the comforting must of old books before she saw the spell begin to take shape as pinpricks of soft, mauve light gathered on the map. Soon there were enough to form gentle tendrils that tested the air, like a glowing anemone. Its motion was so calming that she sighed. As the tendrils coalesced into a single filament, her phone buzzed and immediately buzzed again.

Their eyes met across the room, and in unison they withdrew their phones. Her screen was ablaze with warnings from Asher: