The Autumn Prince

12. Magnolias

"Okay, make it good." She shot me a lidded glare, but it had lost most of its fire in the past few minutes. I didn't sit immediately, instead, I walked past her and hefted the Glim and the loose pile of artifacts from the floor underneath the window.

"This is what I wanted to talk to you about this morning."

"That junk?" She eyed the contents of my arms with suspicion.

"Yes," I set the pile on the coffee table and took the hagstone out of the bowl.

"Thomas, I want to know what's happening to me."

"It's not happening to you as much as it is to me," I said, "but you're part of it now."

"What does that even mean?"

"I want you to look at me, through this." I handed her the stone, and she took it, turned it over in her hands, and glanced back at me.

"It's a rock."

"It's not just a rock. Look through the hole."

She gave me a long-suffering stare, then held it up to her eye and jumped. She lowered it and looked it over, searching for something that would explain what she'd seen.

"What is this?" She said, mystified but not ready to believe it wasn't a trick.

"It's called a glen something. A hagstone. I don't know a whole lot more about it than you do, to be honest."

"What are the different colors?" She looked through it again.

"For that you need some background, but you would have called me crazy if I didn't show you this fir—"

"Woah," she leaned forward to the table and brushed her hands across the Glim. "The book is beautiful! Where did you get this?"

"Miss Gold."

"Miss what?" She stopped staring at the artifacts and looked up at me with her natural eyes.

"The person I met on Sunday. Stewart Hall, remember?"

"Right, your rendezvous." Either the hagstone was a very good distraction, or my proximity helped Katherine more than I'd anticipated. She was no longer accusing, so I sat down next to her and she didn't resist when I took her hand.

"It started when I met her. Then I drank something and ended up with this stuff," I gestured at the table, "it's a long story."

Katherine held the stone back up to her eye, "Is it supposed to be some kind of magic?"

"Would it help if I said, sort of?"

"Not even a little." She lowered the hagstone and cracked a smile and it eased my heart to see it. "Do you know how full of it you sound?" She added.

"More than you can imagine."

"I can imagine a lot."

"Maybe, but there's a lot more."

"More than this?" Katherine jerked her head toward the coffee table. I nodded, and she sighed deeply, turning the hagstone over in her hands. "Okay," she said finally, "Then you better get started because I'll need time to decide which one of us is more insane."

I explained everything in as much detail as I could remember, starting with Miss Gold, telling Katherine about the tea and the storage unit, and then lapsed into the list of details I'd been given in her dorm. I retained most of it, but I didn't explain it as well or as thoroughly as my godmother had. It took surprisingly little time.

It helped that Katherine didn't interrupt and gave me her full attention. I'd sat in on her lectures once or twice, and she had the same expression there, just silently absorbing, categorizing, sorting, and filing the information away. When I'd finished, she continued staring without speaking, measuring my expression and body language. It was the only habit she possessed that annoyed me, that tendency to psychoanalyze people, but she was good at it.