Wand: A Fantasy of Witches, Wizards, and Wands
Chapter Twenty-Seven

As his second week at the Institute dragged on, Nick settled into a routine of going to class, performing his studies in the dorm (or with Richard in a classroom for the practical magic applications such as workings and rituals), and shipping north to the Department of Magical Enforcement with Duchaine.

It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared, though the rumor mongers continued. Delrisa’s seething hatred had morphed into cold shoulder neglect.

His grades improved. He even had time to complete all of Bruno’s Sigils and Symbols work as per their deal, which scored him some brownie points with the big guy at least. During his warlock training Nick’s unique abilities proved uniquely unhelpful. He did manage to alter the color of the wall in the wand practice room using one of the experimental wands, although changing the paint scheme from light blue to a slightly lighter shade of blue—and draining his bioplasma in the process—hardly inspired confidence or hope in the other warlocks.

If anything, his nights in the Department were beginning to feel as stressful, and his warlock peers as antagonistic, as his days inside the Institute with all the suspicious students.

To top it all off he was having nightmares. Every morning he woke in a cold sweat, his bed embarrassingly soaked, and all without a single memory of his nightmare. He tried a dream catcher—and tossed it out the next morning. At the back row of Amulets and Talismans on Thursday, Nick whispered at his table partner Bruno, “You ever hear of African dreamroot?”

“Helps you remember your dreams or something, right?”

“I need some,” Nick said. “I keep having these nightmares—”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

To keep himself from looking idle and inviting Mrs. Willowroots’ ire, Nick tinkered away at his incomplete ‘black holey stone’, an amulet designed to break jinxes and ward off evil. “You think the black market boys will have some dreamroot?”

“Probably.”

“Did you wish to add something?” Mrs. Willowroot said in her sing-song voice. Her daughter, Lisa, turned around and smiled at Nick, a dozen pieces of empowered jewelry jangling as she moved her head.

The last few days had taught him that silence was easier than trying to say something not-sarcastic, so Nick simply shook his head and returned to the black holey stone. Both the gem and the brass casing had sliced his fingers; worse, the amulet didn’t seem to be working.

After class, Nick started to enlist Bruno’s help, but the big guy was quickly joined by Philip. “Hey manfac,” Philip quipped. “Destroy any more worlds in the Dreaming, lately?”

“Anaximander fixed the Elysian Fields,” Nick defended. He’d been banned from Mageball for a month, though even the Dean couldn’t replace any rule against what he’d done.

Philip and Bruno took off for their next class together.

Other Nick and the Wen twins were nowhere in sight. If he lingered in the hall for more than a few ticks, a teacher would descend on Nick and drag him to his next class. It was clear the Dean was somehow watching his movements—at least in the hallways. He supposed it was through the oblong scrying glasses that had mysteriously cropped up all along the hallways.

“Hi Nick,” a small voice chirped.

He looked down to replace petite Lisa Willowroot beaming up at him. “Oh, hey Lisa.” Nick mused idly that her collection of necklaces and bracelets, and the abundance of dirty blonde hair looked like they should be weighing down her tiny frame.

“Hey Lisa, do you know any of the black market boys?”

She looked down at her glittery shoes.

Nick reached out and lifted her head with a gentle finger to her chin. “I don’t want anything bad or dangerous.” He added a laugh for good measure. “I just need some dreamroot. That’s all. See? Nothing sorcerous about that, right?”

The little Wiccan girl smiled. Her pink shade of lipstick had been applied poorly, like a tween playing dress up. When she smiled, her lips spread wide like a caricature or cartoon. It gave her a slightly delirious look.

“I know Jimmy,” Lisa said. “He’s in Wicca with me. Want me to ask him for dreamroot?”

Bingo.

Nick stuffed some cash into her palm, adding, “If there’s any left over, why don’t you go ahead and consider it a thank you.”

The pink lips scowled. “You want to pay me? Like I’m some kind of . . . I don’t know—”

“No-no-no,” Nick gripped her shoulders lightly and bent down a smidge until they were eye level. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Look, sometimes I say stupid things. Everyone knows that. I just, I wasn’t sure how else to thank you for helping me.”

“Well,” Lisa’s mouth twisted up and to the left. “You could ask me to the Dance of the Two Moons Festival. The boys are supposed to ask the girls to the dance.” She averted her gaze and Nick instantly dropped his hands.

“Oh?” was the sum of his sterling wit. Regrouping, he wisely amended with, “Yeah. Of course. Ahem, Lisa Willowroot, will you go with me to the—”

“Yes!” her exclamation nearly froze the hall. “Oops,” she whispered. “I’ll do it. See you.”

A long drawn out gust of air burst from Nick’s lungs. He supposed it wasn’t too bad. He’d get his dreamroot and discover what had been plaguing him in his dreams. And so what if Lisa Willowroot wasn’t a supermodel? So what if she wasn’t stacked like Delrisa Morgana? She was . . . cute, and unlike Delrisa, Lisa wasn’t confused by an inexplicable and burning hatred for Nick.

Yes. That last one definitely tipped the scales in favor of Lisa.

Oberon Smoot, the Alchemy teacher, was charging up the hall. Nick scrambled away, heading towards dorm.

Later that evening after classes were over, Nick, armed with a permission slip from Dean Delacort and a One Time hall pass Vesper Ussane (who’d provided the pass only after a long and extensive interview with the Dean concerning ‘that boys’ proclivities and rights), marched down to the Divination classroom.

Candles burned in sconces every fifteen feet or so, casting a warm but dim glow over the corridor. One of the candles, Nick noticed as he passed by, looked vaguely familiar. Ah yes, it might be one of those obscene candles he’d seen in Fukushima’s chandler shop.

It was a wonder no one else noticed.

Aside from a small cluster of students studying together on the floor outside Lamborghini’s classroom, the corridor was empty, a fact for which Nick was greatly relieved. When he reached Priestess Carnivales’ room, he knocked on the door and entered. Only a single yellow ritual candle was burning. It stood in a polished brass holder dead center in a Boundless Circle; complex Enochian symbols and seasonal correspondence sigils lent it an appropriately mystical air. The corners of the room lay in shadows, and Nick did not see or sense Priestess Carnivales.

He was about to leave and chalk the day up to another disappointment, when a dense thud sounded from the apartment at the other end. A few ticks later a six-inch diameter semi-transparent quartz sphere rolled out. It didn’t stop until it tumbled between Nick’s feet.

“Oh fudge it all,” Priestess Carnivales came scampering out of her apartment. “Dumb stupid—oh!” She laid a hand to her bosom. “Jeezalou. You startled me, dear. What are you doing here?”

He handed her Dean Delacort’s slip, which explained his desire (actually the Grand Vizier’s desire) to have her teach Nick the art of speaking stones.

“Oh,” Priestess Carnivales said after taking an inordinate amount of time reading the slip of paper. “This is highly advanced divination.” She scrutinized him with her bombed-out eyes. “Why does the Dean wish you to learn this, dear?”

“He’s afraid the man who took me in the Dreaming might try and kidnap me,” Nick delivered the line smoothly. “He wants me to be able to communicate if that happens. I guess?”

“Oh dear. Yes, I suppose that makes sense.”

Of course it makes sense to you, Nick thought. He said, “Do you have some time right now to start teaching me?”

The woman hesitated, scratched the pallid white flesh of her arm. “Yes, well, I mean, I was going to polish the seeing stones.” She considered Nick for a minute before continuing in an almost drunken manner, eyes hazy, and limbs akimbo. “Why don’t you help me? If you’re going to learn to use speaking crystals, you should first learn how to care for them.”

As she rambled on her way back into the apartment, Nick retrieved the quartz crystal at his feet and, hefting it in one hand, followed Priestess Carnivales.

Over the course of the next two hours, they polished thirty seeing stones to glass-smooth finishes, and cleaned every scrying mirror in the entire classroom. All the while Priestess Carnivales babbled on about the history and myths of magical forms of communication. Although the astral string theory was somewhat interesting, Nick’s lids were drooping by the time they’d finished polishing every frigging surface in the known universe to a shine.

“Priestess Carnivales,” Nick muttered. “Maybe we should start with the training on speaking stones tomorrow night? It’s getting late, almost eight o’clock, and I still got a lot of course work to do before tomorrow, you know.” Although he’d tried to keep every drop of sarcasm out of his voice, some managed to ooze their way into his words.

“Oh. Oh yes, I suppose you’re—” her eyes, always glassy, glazed over into twin balls of pure white quintessence, and her body went rigid.

“Um, Priestess Carnivales?” he waved a hand before her stony face.

Nick was turning to leave, hoping this wouldn’t come back to bite him in the butt, when the teachers’ voice rang out, clear as a bell and much too loud for this time of night. “The Old One stirs from its long slumber. The sorcerer labors to approach, but the sisters Fate delay him, for reasons known only to themselves.” She uttered a few more verses but they were all in Enochian, and Nick could barely read the angelic language, he could not speak it.

He backed away and fell into a chair and waited. “Thanks for that, Professor Trelawney.”

When Priestess Carnivales returned to her body, she trembled and her eyes finally returned to (her version) of normal. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said in a quieter tone. “Sometimes I get these prophetic attacks. At least, that’s what my mother, Melody Carnivales, used to call them. She was a Seer of the Coven. Nothing deceived her. Oh, Mother.”

Nick made his escape a short while later, slipping out while Priestess Carnivales whimpered on about her dearly departed mother. He’d brought a box of tissues over to her before leaving. That was where he drew the line. Offering to hug one of his teachers to comfort them was simply not in the cards—unless of course that teacher was Miss Quaffle. He wouldn’t mind embracing Miss Quaffle.

Shadows crept along the walls of the Institute under the flickering but watchful eyes of the sconce candles. The inky blankets of darkness seemed alive. Nick averted his eyes as best he could, keeping them down for the most part—a dejected posture that his mood. On reaching his dorm, Nick’s shoulders sagged. He stopped walking.

Mrs. Lily Ussane was lounging on the bench beside the door. She was dressed in a flowing night robe of heavy polyester, doing a crossword puzzle out of the Magic Times. When she heard Nick approach, she lowered the paper.

For a few moments neither one spoke. Then Mrs. Ussane broke the silence with a straight declaration. “Vesper said you’d be late.” She checked her watch. “He was wrong. Well done.”

“Are you a Necromancer?”

Mrs. Ussane shook her head. “I went to Dorm Voodoo.”

It was deathly quiet in the hall. Nick listened to the ringing in his ears and stared across the gulf of ten feet between him and Mrs. Ussane. Inspiration struck. “Are you familiar with the Voodoo infertility curse?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“How familiar?” Nick said. “I only ask because someone cursed my mother before I was born and she won’t tell me who.” When she didn’t respond, he asked again, “How familiar?”

“Very.”

An intake a breath before he continued. “Did you know my parents? You and Mr. Ussane are about the same age as them. I assume you went here together.”

“I knew your father.” She folded the paper and slowly set it down beside her.

“How well did you know him?”

An inscrutable expression briefly darkened her pretty features. Then she said, “Very well.”

Nick could’ve heard a pin drop on the other side of the world. “What do you mean?”

Mrs. Ussane crossed her legs, careful to make sure the robe didn’t steal her propriety. “We were Oberon and Nuada in the Faerie Queene play. We dated from third year novice through to second year journeyman . . . until someone else caught his interest.” Fury wrinkled her visage. She placed her folded hands over her knee.

“My mother,” Nick deduced.

For a minute Mrs. Ussane could not look at Nick. When she returned her gaze, it was razor sharp and unforgiving. “Lisa Picente. Pretty, vivacious, Lisa. And a grade A harlot.”

“My mother was not a harlot!”

She shrugged. “Your mother banged every decent-looking guy in our grade.”

Pranayama techniques were not going to cut it for the sort of rage now boiling through Nick’s system. Beside them the gargoyle turned its head. So slight though was its movement that Mrs. Ussane failed to notice.

“Then what happened?” he said through gritted teeth.

With an ill mannered look Mrs. Ussane said, “What do you think? He no longer had eyes for me, not with pretty little Lisa bouncing on his knee and rubbing up against him every chance she got. Finally, I’d had enough. I told Robert I wasn’t going to be made a fool. I gave him an ultimatum. He could either tell Lisa to get lost, or I would leave him.” Here she looked down.

“Yes?” Nick growled. “And then?” But he knew where this was headed. His hands balled into fists and he pictured dead birds.

“He agreed to brush her off,” a faint smile flittered across her face, but it quickly succumbed to the sneer. “Only, that night something happened. I don’t know what it was, but she did something. Because the next morning, during breakfast, he broke up with me.”

“Did you put the curse on my mother?” Nick burst.

The gargoyle fluttered its stony wings, frightening Mrs. Ussane into shocked motion.

She composed herself and stood up, glowering at Nick. In a low controlled voice she confessed, “Yes. I cursed your mother, and I haven’t regretted it for a single moment in twenty years. I wanted to make sure she would never know the joy of having children with him.”

“Why would you curse her just because your boyfriend broke up with you?” Nick’s voice came out shrill, hysterical. “Are you really that pathetic? People break up all the time. Why didn’t you want her to—”

“Because I’ll never know the joy of having children!” she shrieked. Her cheeks turned a mean red and her eyes watered. “I . . . don’t know how she overcame that curse to have a little wizardling, but it wasn’t through any magic from this world. That curse is unbreakable. Either she communed with a demon, or some sort of alien brand of magic helped her.” Her expression shifted subtly when she said this, almost like she’d realized something.

Nick was working out what she said and its implications when Vesper Ussane bustled through the door. He glanced quickly at Nick and then whisked over to his wife. He embraced her, holding her face in his hands.

“What happened? Did he hurt you?”

“No,” Mrs. Ussane shook her head and wiped at her moist eyes. “We were just talking.”

Vesper Ussane charged over to Nick. He looked the boy straight in the eyes and, barely moving his lips, said, “To bed with you.” He then yanked the hall pass out of Nick’s hand with such violence that the thick parchment sliced his index finger.

Nick skittered into the common room, sucking on the pin drop of blood, and sped past the students studying or otherwise doing something perfectly normal. At last in his bunk, heart still revving like a matadors, he dropped onto his mattress, ignoring the squeaking springs and the creaking slats beneath, all the while thinking: the person who cursed my mother is right here in this building with me.

But even this bombshell needed to be shelved for now. Mrs. Ussane had mentioned something even more disturbing than her role in his family. She’d revealed the fact that otherworldly magic had been used to break the curse that had forced his mother to turn to buffer science in the hope of making . . . Nick. The geneticist had performed a medical miracle, but he’d said that someone else had made Nick into a wizard.

“What’s wrong?” Richard asked from his bed, his nose buried in what looked to be a Bible of all things.

“Nothing,” Nick lied, wondering how he might travel to Philicity to speak with the geneticist.