I Learned Magic for All the Wrong Reasons

Dante yanked the door handle, but the lock stayed shut while Miss Vale hit the red emergency switch behind him. Its plastic cover cracked under her hand, and the voice from his fake job interview kept speaking through the glowing cube on the desk.

”Sit down, Dante, and we can finish your assessment,” the woman said, sounding just as calm as she had inside his bedroom. He pulled harder on the handle while Miss Vale told him to stop listening to her.

”This was supposed to test my blood, not keep me as a fucking sample,” he said, turning toward the desk when Miss Vale pulled a cotton pad from its drawer. She held it out for his bleeding finger and pointed him back toward the door.

He took the pad and pressed it over the small cut while she traced three hooked lines in the air. Blue light followed her fingertip, hanging there as she spoke the Korean words that should have opened the lock.

The handle jerked beneath Dante’s hand, but the door stayed closed. Someone was holding it shut against her spell, and he started pounding on the glass before she could try again.

”We’re locked in here, and the stop switch isn’t working!” he shouted while Miss Vale tried her phone. A person in the corridor called back, asking him to step away from the door, and Dante gave them both their names.

Miss Vale’s call wouldn’t connect, so Dante opened the visitor app on his own phone and pressed its help button. The bedroom woman answered through his speaker, leaving him staring at the screen while she repeated her order to sit.

He closed the app and shoved the phone into his pocket. The person outside was still calling to someone farther down the hall, and that was the only help Dante trusted now.

Miss Vale put her phone beside the cube and crouched to pull the desk’s power cable from the wall. The desk lights died, but the cube kept glowing as she stood again, reaching toward its base.

A strip of white light shot out of the glass and wrapped around her wrist. It jerked her against the desk, and she caught its edge with her free hand while blood began running beneath the tight band.

Dante hurried from the door, moving around the nearest chair before reaching for her trapped hand. ”Above my elbow, not the light,” she told him, pulling her wrist back without gaining an inch. ”It’ll cut you too.”

He stuffed the cotton pad into his pocket and gripped her upper arm with his uncut hand. Bracing his foot against the desk leg, he pulled until his shoulder hurt, keeping her wrist from being dragged closer to the cube.

Her breathing grew rough beside his ear, and her chest rose and fell beneath the green blouse while she fought for room to move. He had been trying not to stare at her in the elevator; now he wanted her breathing normally and making him feel stupid again.

”Keep pulling while I break it,” she said, releasing the desk with her free hand to draw a smaller hooked shape. The light around her wrist tightened, cutting off the Korean words before she could finish, and the blue lines fell apart in sparks.

Dante adjusted his grip on her sleeve instead of letting her slip forward. Waiting for a proper wizard was leaving her bleeding in front of him, and the proper wizard currently needed him to hold her arm.

Something bright moved inside the cube, making him look down. A room appeared in the glass like a picture on a tiny screen, with a woman in a green blouse sitting in a chair.

It was Miss Vale’s face, although the real Miss Vale was beside him, bleeding onto the desk. The copy inside the picture lifted its head before she did, and Dante told her what he could see without loosening his grip.

”Don’t touch it, and don’t believe what it shows you,” she said as a heavy blow hit the door behind them. He couldn’t tell whether the picture showed a real place or another lie, but nothing inside it was helping her.

Letters shone across the dark tabletop, declaring HUMAN PATTERN NOT FOUND. Dante had no idea what that meant, and he wasn’t taking advice about his own body from equipment that had started biting the staff.

Then THE UNWRITTEN appeared beneath it, and his stomach dropped for a completely different reason. That was the villain name in his private computer notes, the one attached to speeches he had practiced when nobody was home.

He had imagined people trembling when they heard it, but Miss Vale was bleeding under his hand and somebody was using his stupid name to frighten her. A line from one of his speeches appeared beside her wrist.

”They stole your writing,” Miss Vale said when he admitted where the words came from. ”That doesn’t make you responsible for this. Keep pulling, and don’t agree to anything.”

”Release her,” Dante told the cube anyway, using the deepest voice he could manage while holding her back. For a moment the band loosened, and he nearly believed he had finally said something useful.

Miss Vale reached for the desk edge, but a second strip of light caught her other wrist before she could grab it. Both bands pulled tight, forcing her forward until Dante’s planted foot scraped against the desk leg.

”I meant let her go, not collect the matching arm,” he snapped, but the woman ignored him. She said she would release Miss Vale if he agreed to take the place she had prepared for him.

The picture changed as she spoke, and the false Miss Vale vanished from the chair. It sat empty inside the cube while the real woman struggled beside him, leaving Dante with a very clear idea of where the voice wanted him.

”I didn’t apply for that, whatever the hell it is,” he said while someone outside called his name. He recognized Rhea’s voice and shouted back that Miss Vale was trapped, hoping she could hear him over the next blow against the frame.

”You don’t have to agree to anything,” Miss Vale told him, but her sleeve was slipping through his fingers and fresh blood ran over her knuckles. He pulled harder while the voice spoke again, louder than Rhea on the other side of the door.

”Either you take the chair, Dante, or she does,” the woman said as the bands dragged Miss Vale’s hands toward the glowing glass, and he felt his foot begin to slide.