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I suddenly realize how close he is, and heat flushes through me. I step back.
“Do you know Octos?” I ask to fill the silence. “Those marks on his arm . . .”
He opens his mouth, and I expect some of the good intentions to bleed through, soften his sharp edges. But his words come out as cold as before. “Not particularly, no.”
“Then how’d you know what he was trying to sell me was bad?”
“He’s a Trader, they’re all the same.” He glances at my furrowed brow and his jaw tightens with impatience. “There are twenty-three known elixirs: ones that can sedate you, stop your heart, echo your thoughts so others can hear them, and a whole host of other illicit things. But Ambrosers claim they’ve discovered more.” He sneers. “They tout those marks on their arms like trophies.”
Abby’s beau Mynick had a dozen or so tallies tattooed on his arm. But something about the way Octos had pulled at both his sleeves in my presence suggested he must have many more. “Why do you say it like that?”
“House of Ambrose is always trying to push the limits, exploit magic to give more credence to the notion that they’re superior to the rest of us. They don’t understand the concept of duty. We serve magic, it does not serve us. You can’t trust people like that.”
“How do you know all this?”
He meets my eyes and my heart squeezes. “Why is that your concern?” He radiates with annoyance.
“Well, you stepped in back there and—”
“I shouldn’t have to step in in the first place. Using magic like that off the grounds isn’t ideal.”
My patience breaks. “Then why did you!”
“Get back to the estate before you wander into more trouble. Good night.” He storms off.
Ugh! If he thinks I’m such a screwup, so bad at all this . . . “Why did you request to mentor me!”
He’s far enough that I yell, and my voice echoes off the stone memorials in the park. He doesn’t even look back. Irritation burns through me as he disappears into the forest in a cloud of black.
I stomp the entire way back to the Tavern to grab Abby and go home, fuming less and less with each step. Because for as crappy as this night was, there’s one silver lining, one that could help me get a hold on my unruly toushana. I can’t shake the image of Jordan’s magic turning that plant to ash.
I will find out how he did that.
FOURTEEN
Abby’s a great friend, the best roommate, super smart, but not at all a morning person. She didn’t wake up at eight to take me to the library and was still in bed snoring when I slipped out of our room at eight thirty. Fortunately breakfast was grab-and-go ready, and despite some possible indigestion later from eating so quickly, I’m at the library’s entrance by nine.
It’s on the second floor between the dining hall and yoga studio. Its carved doors with half-sun handles tell a story. Inside, shelves are stacked floors high with clusters of study tables peppered among them. Walking inside feels like slipping on my favorite cozy socks. The first place Mom and I visited after each move was the local library. I skim an electronic catalog hungry to figure out what exactly Jordan did to that plant in the Tavern, and how. Any books on Dragun lore should be shelved in the Secundus section. Signs lead me to a small room with its own set of glass doors where a woman with mousy brown hair is repairing the spines of worn books with the shift of her hands.
“Excuse me,” she chirps, removing her cat-eye glasses. “I need to see a permission slip to check out books in here.”
“I don’t have one.”
“It’s fine, Mrs. Loudle, she’s with me.”
I turn and the precise person I didn’t want to see, all six foot something of him, is right behind me. My grip tightens on my bag strap as he walks past. His skin brushes mine. I jerk aside to get out of his way a bit harder than I mean to and knock over a stack of Mrs. Loudle’s books. I pick them up hastily.
“Quell.” He dips his chin in greeting.
The way he stormed off last night makes me prefer rolling my eyes, but I think better of it and dip my chin back. “Jordan.”
“Mister Wexton,” the librarian, Mrs. Loudle, says. “My bright and early bookworm, find anything good today?” She turns to me. “This boy reads more than anyone I’ve seen in my thirty years here.”
He likes books?
“I did find a few this time actually,” he says, showing his stack to Mrs. Loudle, and I peek for a glimpse of their spines. He catches me watching, and I promptly look away.
Mrs. Loudle smooths a thumb across a badge, and my name appears in bold black ink. “Here you are.” She hands it to Jordan.
