Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

I t was well after dark when I got back to the Fount, and Sebastian Grimm was waiting at my door.

He did not wait leaning against the wall or slouching against the nearest hallway pillar, as I would have. Instead, he stood directly in the center of the corridor, arms crossed and posture immaculately straight, one finger tapping insistently against the fold of his arm lest anyone doubt his impatience.

"You're late," he said.

I pushed past him to open the door. "I had things to do in the city."

The things I had done still sloshed a little in my stomach and made me fumble the key, but Grimm was too busy glaring at the back of my head to notice my unsteady hands. Once we were both inside, I clapped my hands to bring the charmed lamps sputtering to life, illuminating the piles of paper and books on the room's only table, as well as the various instrument cases and sheet music that littered the floor. Clothes were draped everywhere in a manner I considered lavish and Agnes had once referred to as slovenly . Grimm looked entirely out of place standing in the midst of it all, with his perfectly pressed coat.

Does he cast a spell to stay so neat all the time? I wondered. By contrast, my hair was slipping from its tie, and I'd definitely dragged my sleeve through someone's drink earlier (it may have been my own).

Grimm cleared his throat. "Where should we begin?"

"With generic counterspells, I guess. Here, I'll write down the books I want, and you can fetch them from the library while I look over the spell again. By the time you get back I should have a better idea which counterspells might actually do the trick."

I derived petty satisfaction from having an excuse to order Grimm around (see how he liked it!) and took full advantage of the situation, adding a few titles to the list that had nothing to do with counterspells at all.

Once I'd finished scribbling, I laid the paper flat on my palm and sang a few words over it. This cantrip was stronger than what I would usually attempt, but my senses were still dulled by the drinking I'd done. It made it easier to ignore the discomfort and keep casting until the paper in my hand folded itself into the shape of a bird.

"Ha!" I said, a little breathlessly. I pinched the paper bird's wings shut before it could escape and held it out to Grimm.

"Release this and follow it. The books it lands on are the ones I want."

Grimm didn't move to take it. He stared at the paper in my hand with grave suspicion.

"It's a piece of paper. It's not going to bite you."

"You made it. Will it not?"

"Careful, Grimm," I said. "That was almost a joke. Think of your reputation. I promise the worst this can do is give you a paper cut."

I leaned farther over the table and waved the paper bird directly in Grimm's face until he finally took it, pinching the wings gingerly between thumb and forefinger.

Grimm's nose wrinkled. "You smell like a distillery."

I sat back down hastily and tucked my soiled sleeve under the table. "Do I? How strange."

"We are meant to be working ."

"Yes, and that would be much easier for me to do with the proper reading material. So, hurry along." I made a little shooing motion with my hand and, in the process, nearly knocked my quill and inkpot over.

Grimm's lip curled in disgust. "Can you even read in this state?"

"Better than you can, certainly," I snapped.

It was crueler than I'd meant to be. That was always how my worst mistakes happened: carelessly. The fact that I didn't want to hurt anyone rarely stopped it from happening.

"Grimm," I began, but he turned away with a flourish of his black coat and marched across the room, letting go of the spell as he went. I briefly saw the flutter of paper wings before the door slammed shut.

He was gone a long while. Long enough for the squirming feeling in my stomach to settle into a leaden sense of remorse. I splashed some cold water on my face and did my best to shrug off my guilty conscience in order to study the curse before he came back. The copy Grimm had written out earlier was a little wrinkled and still had my cosmetic charm on the other side, so I wrote it onto a new piece of paper with plenty of room for me to make notes in the margins. By the time Grimm returned almost an hour later, I had read the thing so many times I was certain I would fall asleep with those words running endlessly through my head.

Grimm placed the stack of books at my elbow, pushed his chair to the opposite side of the table from me, and then sat. He didn't ask if I'd discovered anything. He barely looked at me.

I pushed the curse across the table toward him. "You may as well take a look while I start scriving out counterspells. Perhaps there's something a caster might notice that I would not."

"I am unlikely to notice anything. As you pointed out earlier," Grimm said coldly.

I winced. "That was… uncalled for. You should have just told me to shut up," I joked weakly, though the very idea made me want to run from the room.

The effort was lost on Grimm. "This is not a laughing matter," he said, stern as an instructor admonishing an errant pupil. "Are you so inebriated that the danger of this spell has escaped your attention?"

"Oh, fuck off, Grimm. I don't need a lecture about what this means from you. I'm the one who's had the spell cast on him, aren't I?" I jabbed myself in the chest with my pointer finger to illustrate. "Excuse me if I needed to take the edge off before spending a few hours with someone who could easily order me to go jump off a cliff. I feel on the verge of a heart attack every time you open your mouth!"

We glared across the table at each other. The room seemed to grow palpably colder, though it was probably just the night air.

"I wouldn't," Grimm said.

"What?"

"I don't like you, but I dislike this magic more. I used it accidentally, before. I will be more mindful from now on. You have my word."

That took the wind out of my sails a bit. It was hard to maintain my righteous anger when Grimm insisted on being decent, in his own holier-than-thou sort of way.

"In the interest of helping you keep that promise, I will, er, also attempt to curb my tongue. As much as I am able. Silence doesn't come naturally to me."

"I've noticed," he said emphatically.

We settled into an uneasy sort of peace. One of the books Grimm had brought back contained a counterspell that called itself all-purpose so I scrived it onto a blank piece of paper while Grimm took out his casting kit. Everything else was an echo of what we'd done to cast the spell in the first place: a pinprick of blood from my fingertip, smeared onto Grimm's and then pressed to the paper I'd handed him. The only difference was that this time each of us hesitated right before it was cast.

"Would it be helpful if I read it aloud first?" I asked, then immediately wondered if the offer was insulting.

"Unnecessary," Grimm said shortly. "I'm familiar with this spell. I've used it before."

"Oh?" Casters didn't often have cause to undo their work. "Whatever for?"

Grimm hesitated. "To change my hair back to its normal color."

I pictured him, seventeen and pink-haired and too proud to just wait out the duration of my simple charm, and had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep the laughter from spilling out in a delighted burst.

"Lucky, really, that you've had some practice," I said, once I was certain I could do so with a straight face.

"Indeed," Grimm said, voice clipped. "Are you ready?"

"Yes," I said. "Wait, no! Cast it out loud. The first time you cast silently; this time should be the opposite. Reverse verbal components and all that." This was true, but it was also true that the idea of just standing there and waiting in the quiet made me feel even more helpless than I already was. If I could hear the spell being cast, at least I would know when it was over.

Grimm raised his eyebrow at the request but complied.

As he began the casting, I closed my eyes and directed my attention inward, hoping to feel a shift. My gut told me a curse as devious as this one would not be undone on the first try, but a small tendril of hope unfurled within me all the same. We had been so unlucky already, perhaps we were owed this one reprieve.

I should have known better. Magic has no concept of debt. There is no payment it does not either take or refuse immediately. It holds nothing back for later.

Smoke from the burning parchment filled my nostrils. Grimm's voice rumbled over the words in the old language before coming to a stop. I opened my eyes.

The paper in Grimm's hand was gone, smeared to ash on his fingertips.

We stared at each other uncertainly.

"We have to test it," I said. "Tell me to do something,"

Grimm pursed his lips, looking deeply reluctant. After a moment he said, "Sit down, Loveage."

Gladly. I would gladly sit. Such a simple request, so easy to fulfill that it made my heart sing. If that's what Grimm wanted, I would—

When the haze of contentment cleared, I found myself sitting in my chair, fists clenched tightly enough to leave half-moon imprints of each nail across my palms. I remembered moving, but the recollection was vague, overwhelmed by how much I had wanted to move.

I stood. The chair that a moment before had seemed perfectly comfortable was now the last place I wanted to be.

"The chances of getting it right on the first try were slim," I said. "It doesn't mean anything. Let's try the next one."

By the time we'd worked our way through all the basic counterspells I could think of, my nerves were jangling with repressed panic. Each time I told myself the answer was simply to resist, and each time I found myself incapable of doing so. Every time Grimm ordered me to sit, I obeyed with the same happy eagerness of a dog. By the time the eleventh bell rang, I was worn down by our lack of success, and even Grimm was beginning to show signs of fatigue.

"That was the last one."

Grimm removed a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the ash from his hands as he frowned down at the library books. "You said a custom counterspell was the most likely solution. Perhaps we should refocus our efforts?"

"Probably," I said reluctantly. "But that poses another set of problems." Grimm raised one brow, and I sighed. "Control magic is strong stuff. It will require a counterspell of equal measure. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but that's not really my area of expertise."

A look of confusion briefly passed over Grimm's face, then his expression cleared. "Right. I'd forgotten." Of course he had. For someone like Grimm, who handled Grandmagic with the same ease most people handled cutlery, avoiding such a tool was inconceivable. "You're saying we need help."

"Yes."

"If we go to the Fount's board and explain what happened, that it truly was an accident—"

"No," I said quickly. "That's not a good idea. I'm on thin ice with the board already. Phade as good as told me I'd be kicked out the next time I put so much as a toe out of line, and control magic is so far outside that line I don't see how this could end well for me. Even if they don't think I did it on purpose, they'll say it shows a pattern of careless behavior, or something like that."

Grimm's eyes flickered down to meet mine. I knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth. I hated him for it, and myself for giving him the opening.

"Would they be wrong?" he asked. "Allowing that spell to get mixed in with your own was careless. If trouble finds you so easily, perhaps you should accept your fate. You're unlikely to make it through the entire year without causing another upset anyway."

From anyone else, this would have sounded like a taunt, but Grimm's voice was flat, emotionless. This was simply how he saw the world, shades of black and white, good and bad, practical or senseless. It was how he saw me . Talking with him was like talking to a wall. It made me want to throw something just to watch it smash against him.

Four years of experience had taught me that such theatrics would have very little lasting effect on Grimm—but I knew what would. I couldn't remember a lightfoot charm, or write the sort of spells that would impress our peers in Duality class, but I had always had a knack for worrying away at Grimm's composure.

"Fine." I settled back in my chair and steepled my fingers together. "Let's follow this thought through. Say we do go to the board, what then? Maybe they'll help us. Maybe I get kicked out in the process, huzzah for you, but what about after that? Do you know what happened to the last caster who was caught using control magic, Grimm? Because I do. I looked it up in the library over lunch today. Dreadful story. She was thrown out of the Fount, of course, but she also had to face a Coterie tribunal. They sentenced her to wear magic-dampening bracelets for ten years. Ten years! And that was just for casting a persuasion charm, not even something so strong as the curse you put on me. Even if they blame me for writing the spell, you have to admit that casting it doesn't look good for you."

Grimm's face paled several shades as I spoke, and his mouth settled itself into a flat, unhappy line. I leaned forward and tilted my head to ask, "Do you think the Coterie will jump to recruit a caster whose name is associated with such a mistake? My father has a seat in the Citadel, you know. Should I ask him what your chances are?"

"Enough, Loveage," Grimm said, turning his face away. "You've made your point. We will seek aid elsewhere."

"Excellent!" I said brightly. "Cassius seems like the best option, since he knows already. Agnes can help as well. Not with the scriving, obviously, but she has access to some of the locked vaults for her studies. She might be able to rustle up some more information on control spells."

"No," Grimm said sharply. "There's no need to involve Quest."

I frowned. "This whole thing started because we're obviously terrible at working together. Doesn't it make sense that, to fix it, we would ask for help from the people we actually know how to collaborate with?"

"Cassius is the natural choice. He already knows, and he can scrive what you cannot. I see no use in bringing someone else into this mess."

"Cassius may be skilled, but it's no small thing to scrive a counterspell for something you have no knowledge of. Any information Agnes can get from the vaults would make his job easier. And she's hardly going to turn us in." I looked Grimm over thoughtfully. "But maybe that's not what you're concerned with. Maybe you just don't want anyone else to know that the great Sebastian Grimm actually made a mistake."

With that, the fragile peace we'd been operating under shattered with an almost audible crash. Grimm snatched his casting kit off the table and fixed his cold, dark eyes on me.

"I am no stranger to error," he said, "but in this case, the only mistake I made was believing you were capable of at least a modicum of skill. You're right, Agnes and Cassius should be informed. It's best you and I work together as little as possible."

Then he turned and stormed out of the room. Or at least, he did his best to storm. In reality he had to jerkily navigate around all the items scattered across the floor, which rather ruined the effect.

"What do you know, Grimm," I called out cheerfully, just before he slammed my door shut for the second time. "We've found something to agree upon!"

I dreamed about Grandmagic that night.

I could feel it coming on after Grimm left. There was a secret stash of liquor hidden under my bed for just this sort of occasion, but even drinking myself into a stupor didn't help this time. The control spell was running through my head in an endless loop when I finally fell asleep, so it was hardly surprising that I woke with words I didn't dare put to paper burning my fingertips.

You see, it's one thing to avoid writing Grandmagic, but it's quite another thing to stop thinking about it.

I never did, really.

It was like being placed in an empty room with an elephant and being told, Do not think about the elephant . I could write all the elaborate charms and clever cantrips I wanted, but Grandmagic was still there , and sometimes the urge to reach out and touch it was so strong it overflowed into my dreams to keep my other nightmares company.

The funny thing was, nothing bad ever happened in these dreams. I always woke up just before the spells I created in sleep could be cast. I never had to watch them go wrong. And every time, there was a part of me that was certain that this time, this time , it would have worked.

These particular nightmares didn't frighten me because of anything that happened inside them—they were terrifying because of how dangerous they made me feel upon waking.