Black Mist: Budding [on hiatus]

9. Um We Have Sort of a Problem Here

Rose spent the night in Jackson's small faculty apartment, reading through his notes. There wasn't anything significant there, nothing about dark magic or the intruders from last year, but it was a highly effective distraction. It was mostly just his lesson plans and variations he had made to the potions and poultices from the textbook. She read through them as if they were a textbook, and in fact, she thought they would have made for a better anthology than the one prescribed for her class. As the dawn light seeped around the curtains, Rose bundled everything together and organized it into a spare binder. She would keep his notes to help her in the class. It had been clear that someone had rifled through his belongings after he left. They obviously took what interested them and left the rest. So, as far as Rose could tell, nobody would be missing a few pages of notes. Or a few hundred.

She pressed her eye to the peephole, hoping to find an empty hallway. There was no movement, no sound, so she opened the door quickly and slid out, pulling it shut with the tiniest click. She raced up a few floors and into her dorm, where her four roommates still slept peacefully. Rose grabbed her uniform, showered and dressed quickly, then headed down to the library. She wanted--no needed--to avoid the crowds.

Rose was first at the dining hall when the lights fluttered on just before 6:30. Mrs. Silver could not cook. She was a wonderfully sweet woman, but the only food she knew how to prepare was pancakes, and there is a limit to how many days in a row someone can eat pancakes. Rose heaped bacon, fresh fruit, and a potato, onion, and bell pepper hash onto her plate, avoiding the eggs. She hated eggs. Every time she thought about what they really were, it made her stomach turn. Her stomach tightened now with memories of other things that made her stomach turn. She got a diet Coke with just a shot of cherry from the soda fountain and sat at the table by the window that had become her usual last year. Her appetite disintegrated in a haze of foul and foggy memories; Rose stared out the window for a few minutes until she heard students approaching. Then she hurriedly cleared her table and darted out, passing Alastair, who smiled and waved, and Ellie's brother Daniel, who glanced at his watch.

"You know her?" she heard Daniel ask.

She really wanted to stop and hear his answer, but she kept walking as if she hadn't heard the question. Rose had the desperate urge to run all the way downtown to Alastair's apartment, to close herself in the small cocoon of his bedroom and hide with the cats. But she couldn't. She just hoped her spring classes would occupy her fretful mind, but there was still almost an hour, so she returned to the library.

<<•>>

Alastair had been assigned to help Mr. Cain with the PnP classes for the next few weeks, so he reported to the potions lab after breakfast. Cain was already there, organizing his materials.  

"Good morning, Silver," Cain said with barely a glance up. "I am so glad you're here. I wasn't sure if you would be available--I asked Whitley for your help last semester."

Alastair stepped further into the room, nodding. "Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Things were kind of crazy for me in the fall. But my NYU classes don't start until after Martin Luther King Day, so I'm here to assist with anything you need for a couple of weeks."

Cain finally looked up from the textbook in his hands. "Well, there is a lot to do, but right now maybe you can answer some questions for me--" Alastair froze, thinking Cain must have figured out that he was Amping all last semester. Had he literally just given himself away? "--about the material Jackson covered in his various classes. I got through the fall, but I really just winged it."

"Okay, yeah. Sure." Alastair exhaled his relief, reaching for the course list in Cain's outstretched hand. "I didn't take all his classes, though."

"That's okay. Just the ones you have, like PnP. Give me a sense of what he did with you guys."