Page 82 of Malcroix Bones Academy

I frowned. “Of course it matters.”

“Why?” he asked, with maddening reasonableness.

“Because you’re definitely hiding something.” I looked up, staring at him. “And now you’ve roped me intohelpingyou hideit. I’m just wondering why. Why on earth would you trust me with something like this?”

“Magique,” he said, clearing his throat. “Why onMagiquewould I trust you with something like this. You need to adjust your language. It’s another thing that makes you stand out. Trust me, Magicals notice every single time you reference your old world.”

I clenched my jaw, annoyed by the deflection.

I also, grudgingly, made a mental note to try and remember that.

“Why would you tell me anything?” I repeated.

He shrugged, then pointed a finger over his own head, his eyes flat.

“Because I had no choice,” he said simply.

19

Classes

“You’re an absolute maniac,” Miranda muttered, staring down at my schedule. “I’m shocked they even approved this. It’s utterly mad. When will you sleep?”

Miranda shook her head, which now had a shoulder-length bob of honey-blonde hair.

Her irises reflected the exact same shade of gold-blonde.

She’d grown bored of the lavender, she told me, and blonde was her natural color, and she hadn’t had it that way in a while. She’d changed things up bynotgoing back to her natural eye color, which turned out to be blue. Miranda confided she might go darker with her coloring next, either auburn with dark red eyes, or dark blue with dark blue eyes, or possibly black with obsidian-colored eyes.

According to Draken, she’d changed her hair and eye color constantly since he’d known her. Miranda scoffed that she’d been doing it a lot longer than that.

“What in Hades were you thinking, you nutball?” Miranda asked with exasperated fondness. “You have…” She counted, her eyes growing wider as she stared at the modified map I’d created, after tinkering with a number of spells.

“Is this right?” she demanded, staring at me incredulously. “Are you takingtencourses this term?”

I shrugged, feeling my face grow hot. “Two of them are practicals,” I pointed out. “There’s no real homework for either, and I’ve been told Magical Ethics has next to no homework, either. It’s all ethical thought experiments in class?”

“But you’re takingtwoelectives,” Miranda said. “No one does that first term. Not even Luc is doing that. And two of these requirements you could have taken in different terms. Most do Flying in Autumn, Magical Ethics in Spring, and the Theory requirement for Magical Combat in Summer term. You’ve gotall threeof them in Autumn.”

I could only shrug.

My monocerus primal brandished its horn at Miranda’s corgi and stamped its hooves. The corgi had been trying to circle around behind it, eyes wide with mischief. The monocerus held up a back claw menacingly, and the corgi pounced, causing the monocerus to leap in the air, then gallop around first me, then Miranda to get away.

“Stop it, you goof,” Miranda scolded the corgi. “Leave her new, pretty unicorn primal alone! Not everyone wants to wrestle with you, just because Drake’s lion does!”

“It’s a monocerus, not a unicorn,” I corrected. “And what if I want to continue study in Ethics or Combat Theory?” I asked, a thoroughly reasonable question in my view. “Shouldn’t I take them early to determine that?”

“Only Warlocks study combat theory beyond the basic requirement,” Miranda pointed out. “Basically, people going into our Magical military?”

“Ineed to play catch-up, though,” I explained, feeling oddly defensive. “I didn’t know that about Warlocks, so you’re only making my point. I read all summer, and Istillfeel like I don’t know anything.” I watched the monocerus charge the corgi withits horn. “I don’t even fully understand what some of these descriptions mean. If I don’t learn the basics, how will I know which ones I want to study for real?”

“Maniac,” Miranda muttered again, back to staring at my map. “Complete nutter.” She looked up from all the grids and different-colored squares, her light eyes serious. “Can you enchant one of these for me, by the way?”

I blinked.

I wasn’t used to being around people who took schoolwork as seriously as I did. Really, I wasn’t used to being around people who took schoolwork seriously at all. In Overworld, everyone scoffed at my overly thought-out grids and color-coded calendars and tabs. Even Archie thought my hyper-organization was an endearingly nerdish quirk of mine.

“Absolutely!” I said, probably a little too enthusiastically. “Lend me your map tonight, and tell me how you’d like it. Or we could do it together, if you’d rather?”