“Cooking?”
Margot smiled. “And baking, especially. Instincts are helpful, but it’s really all about chemistry. Precision. It’s hard to half-ass. You have to pay attention. Concentrate. It tends to”—she paused, seeming to grasp for the right words—“blank out the rest of the mind. The worries. The anxiety. Those thoughts that roll around, over and over.” She glanced at me. “Probably not unlike fighting and training.”
“They can definitely have a focusing quality,” I agreed. “You have to watch your opponent, dodge the move he’s making, try to figure out what he’ll do next. It’s very engaging that way. And the consequences for not focusing, for not paying attention, are pretty severe.”
I’d learned that lesson early on. Catcher had been the first person to train me, and he’d used flaming fireballs to keep me on my toes. I’d managed to avoid getting hit straight-on, but I’d been nicked by plenty of errant sparks. Lesson learned.
She smiled. “I don’t know how you do it. Just”—she waved a hand—“get out there and fight.” She leaned forward over the hands she’d linked on the table. “Don’t you get scared? I just can’t imagine the stuff you and Ethan and the rest of the guards have to face all the time.”
“We’re trained not to run,” I said. “So when you feel that flight-or-fight instinct kicking in, you stay and you fight. And it’s definitely easier now than it was in the beginning. More confidence, I guess. The more battles you fight, the easier it is to fight the next one. Like baking, you can develop the instincts for it.”
“And I guess the perks are pretty good. Our Master is no slouch.”
“No, he definitely is not. A pain in the ass sometimes, but definitely no slouch.” I glanced at her. “Are you seeing anyone?”
“Not at the moment.” She tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “I think I’m nearly over my ‘I want to be alone’ phase. It’s been great, but times like this, I really wish I had the comfort.”
I nodded. “I totally get that.” My phone rang, and I checked the screen. It was a message from Luc, telling me Paige was waiting.
I rose, pushed in my chair. “I have to get back to work. I don’t suppose you’ve got any fresh coffee in the kitchen?”
She cocked her head at me. “Got some studying to do?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I actually do.” And I smiled, because research was something I could very definitely do.
• • •
Or not.
I had a master’s degree and nearly a Ph.D., since my study had been interrupted by my transition to vampire. I’d done my time in libraries and coffeehouses, with notebooks, pens, sticky notes, cups of coffee, and bottles of water.
And I felt completely stymied by alchemy.
Ethan found me in the library as sunrise neared. I sat at a table across from Paige in jeans and a long-sleeved Bears T-shirt (“Monsters of the Midway,” one of my personal favorites). There was a spread of alchemy books on the tabletop and a notebook to my right, along with a fountain pen and the travel mug I’d borrowed from Margot and had to bribe the Librarian to let me bring in.
“You’ll spill it,” he’d said, barring the door.
“I won’t spill it.”
“They always say that. And then they spill it.”
“It’s got a lid,” I insisted, holding it out to show him.
“And they spill it anyway,” he said testily. Information, the Librarian was good with. Customer relations, not so much.
That had gone on for nearly ten minutes, and didn’t stop until I’d promised to lend him a book on medieval lyric poetry still in my collection. The book was out of print, and he’d been searching for a copy, hoped I might have one. I hadn’t opened it in a year, so it was an easy trade, although I did make him promise to put a “Donated by Merit” sticker in the front.
Paige and I both pulled off earphones when Ethan walked in.
He grinned. “Is this what grad school was like?”
I capped my fountain pen. “Only if you’re going to ask me to grab something to eat, get a drink, and go hear this band, but then ditch me and enjoy a pretty good time with a blonde in the corner.”
Paige snorted. She’d been energized by the work, but she’d been doing it for hours. There were blue shadows beneath her eyes, and she looked beyond vampirically pale. Not good for a sorcerer.
“That is very specific,” Ethan said, “and doesn’t really match my plan.”
“Then it’s not an exact comparison,” I said.
“How’s the work going?” Ethan asked.
We both looked at Paige.
“It’s going,” she said, gesturing to the poster and easel. “Would you like me to play Vanna White?”
“Please,” Ethan said with a smile. He perched on the corner of the desk, hands clasped in his lap, as she rose.
“Just like words, alchemical symbols can be grouped into sentences.” She pointed to the subsets of symbols, which she’d bracketed together. “I’m calling them phrases. Each phrase has between three and ten symbols, and each phrase makes up a part of the entire equation.”
“For the purpose of?”
“One, telling the user exactly what to do—like a recipe. And two, actually igniting the magic. We think that’s why it’s written in a particular place instead of a spell book.”
She pointed to three symbols. “The phrases contain the elemental building blocks of alchemy, like mercury, sulfur, and salt.” She pointed to symbols of Jupiter and Saturn. “There are symbols for the time of year, the position of earth in the cosmos. And that’s where the magic gets customized with the hieroglyphs—the sorcerer’s tiny drawings. Some, we think, are supposed to be objects. References to the things actually used to make this magic work. But most are the actions—distillation, burning, and like that.”
Ethan frowned, crossed his arms as he studied the board. “So magic will have to be made?”
“Correct,” Paige said, gaze scanning the lines of symbols. “The magic isn’t self-effectuating. The symbols are magical enough that erasing won’t stop the magic, but not magical enough to kindle on their own. Don’t think of them as paint on a canvas.” She looked back at Ethan. “Think of them more like”—she paused, considering—“carvings in the fabric of the universe. You can wipe away the ink, the color, but that doesn’t change the underlying magic that’s already been wrought just by writing them.”