I Learned Magic for All the Wrong Reasons

Bell saved the ad from Posey’s phone and called Miss Vale. Dante stood beside him in the classroom, watching a stranger sell his first magic lesson as a private service. The ad used real footage but cut out every mistake and every warning about his injured hand.

”They’ve made me look like I know what I’m doing,” he said, finding that considerably less enjoyable with a private demonstration already booked against his name.

”Which is why nobody will be attending it,” Bell replied, keeping the phone for Miss Vale when she arrived.

Miss Vale came to hear his account and save a copy of the ad before returning the phone to Posey. The search for Anika’s brother was still going on. She also asked Dante exactly what the cube had offered him, since the room recording had stopped before those choices appeared. He told her about its demand that he accept a placement and its threat to take her instead. He did not know what the placement was, and she did not ask him to guess.

Before he left for the next class, Vale called Professor Artemis, the potions teacher. She explained his burns and Bell’s ban on more casting that morning. He could watch the lesson, but he was not there to perform for anyone.

Posey led him there with a timetable whose lunch break kept crawling toward passing students. ”It followed Anika yesterday, so I thought it might like people. I did try telling it you’d already eaten,” she said, pinning the word beneath her thumb.

Steel benches filled the potions room, where extraction fans hummed above cauldrons and a skeleton hand sorted washed spoons beside the sink.

Professor Lorelei Artemis tightened a fan fitting beneath a broad witch’s hat, her dark hair pinned clear of the blades. She looked about thirty-five, with amber eyes and a plum dress fitted around a narrow waist and generous curves that made her open white coat seem terribly committed to letting him fail at eye contact.

”Vale said observation only, and she didn’t mean my neckline,” Artemis said, handing him safety glasses while Posey suddenly became very interested in the floor.

After collecting their phones, Artemis drew a narrow spiral above her cauldron, leaving a blue line hanging behind her fingertip. She connected its outer end to its center while speaking the Korean words slowly enough for them to follow.

”Kkeulneun mura, kkeulji malgo, goun gimman goi naera,” she finished, and the completed sigil flashed before fading. Beneath it, a ring tightened around the steam and pressed the bubbling mixture below the rim.

”The shape and words make the spell start,” Artemis explained. ”The ring you see afterward holds the steam down. Watch those as two separate things.” She let the ring go, and the steam rose freely again. Dante watched what it did instead of trying to memorize the drawing.

Lucan, the pink-haired student from basics, watched from a back bench as Artemis brushed a liquid over a spoon. Blue fingerprints appeared where a lifting spell had touched it. She called the liquid tracing wash. It showed signs of magic left on an object, not who meant well or who had done something wrong.

Posey measured powdered leaves while Dante read the quantities, keeping his hands away from the burner. She wanted to study potions that helped with moods, she explained, particularly the sort that made an awful day bearable without putting someone to sleep.

”You could sell that during exams,” he suggested, and her smile widened because he had listened long enough to offer something useful.

Across the aisle, a student with purple freckles stumbled over her final word, leaving her spiral flickering above a cauldron that began knocking against its stand. Foam climbed the sides, swelling into a steaming dome while she fumbled for the burner.

Dante reached toward her before he thought about Bell’s warning. He could see hot foam about to hit her, and he had just watched Artemis stop exactly that problem. He pictured the same ring holding it down. Warmth rushed into his fingertips, and the ring appeared around the rising foam.

The mixture struck it hard enough to splash back into the pot, and Dante nearly pulled away before realizing his hand had never touched anything. Artemis, already crossing the aisle, shut off the burner, moved the cauldron onto a cooling tile with its handles, then told him to release the restraint.

When he finally let it go, the room stayed quiet except for the fans, and the student stared at him over her rescued mixture.

”He didn’t draw it,” Lucan said, his own unfinished spiral trembling above his bench. ”He didn’t even say the first word.”

”I wasn’t trying to do the exercise,” Dante said, looking at the space where his ring had been. He had meant to help, but apparently his hand no longer waited for him to understand how.

Artemis checked the student for splashes before examining his dressing and asking about heat, reminding him that Vale had warned her about yesterday’s injury. He reported warmth without pain, watching her test whether he could move each finger.

”You may be a prodigy, but I watched you copy a restraint, not prove you’re safe to cast anything you fancy,” she said. ”You helped her, but hot liquid could still easily take your skin off next time.”

”I’d prefer to keep my skin, especially now somebody’s advertising it,” he said, although the laugh that followed did nothing to stop three women watching his hand.

Artemis kept him away from spells for the remaining lesson, asking him afterward whether he would consider a test that required no casting. When he agreed, she called Vale from the bench, reported the accident, and received permission to check for traces without drawing blood.

Posey finished wiping their bench while he waited, then touched his sleeve and asked him to come to residence movie night. ”I could save you the seat beside me, if you’d like. I was hoping you might come.”

”That depends how close the seats are,” he said, and she smiled while putting the cloth away. ”Well, it’s a sofa, so we wouldn’t have to sit very far apart. I’ll wait downstairs while Professor Artemis finishes with you.”

He promised to come, mentally abandoning every evening plan he had never actually made, and watched her leave before Artemis cleared a separate space on the bench.

Artemis brought out a shallow silver dish containing a test liquid, a reagent from her work with magical traces. She explained that it could react to a caster’s blood. His cut was covered by a clean, dry dressing, so she expected no reaction, but she wanted to check. She rested his wrist on a clean tile beside the dish, leaving a measured gap between his fingers and the liquid.

”Don’t cast, and tell me if your fingers heat up,” she instructed, keeping her own hands beside the dish while he waited for something he could at least pretend to recognize.

Five red lines spread through the test liquid even though his dressing was dry and he had not touched it. They joined beneath his hand and pulsed with his heartbeat. Dante looked at the gap between skin and dish while Artemis checked it again. Nothing should have crossed that space.

A second, slower beat appeared in the liquid, different from his own pulse. Then the liquid rose toward his hand. Dante had not cast anything or imagined it moving, and Artemis reached for him before it could touch his fingers.