9
the man in the smoke
Timothy’s question haunted Sera all night and throughout the next morning. By History of Clairvoyance, she was sure it would consume her entire day, until Mrs. Norton shut the book she lectured from and said to the class, “Not all of us possess the gift of clairvoyance. Most of us are given only a touch.” She paced before a long table at the front of the room. A white blanket was draped on top, and whatever she’d hidden under it formed lumps beneath the fabric.
“Those of you whose magic tends to be Aether-inclined—and seventhborns, of course,” she said as a bitter afterthought, “will find concepts of divination come easiest to you, but that, too, requires much practice. Visions can at times be abstract and influenced by many factors, which is why the Aetherium tends to shy away from it as a serious subject of study.” She gripped a corner of the white sheet and smiled at the class. “That does not mean one cannot have a bit of fun now and then.”
She whisked the sheet up from the table. The girls in the class clapped and whispered in delight at the array of divination tools revealed. There was a stack of tarot cards, a crystal ball, tea leaves and teacups, a spirit board, a pendulum, and a scrying mirror. “There are many tools used for predicting the future, as you can see, and I would like for us to have a little demonstration.” She tapped a spindly finger on her chin and glanced about the room. “Do we have a volunteer?”
Every girl speared her hand into the air, but rolling her eyes, Sera settled back in her chair. Though curious about whether or not she would ever find her family, she decided against volunteering in class. Mrs. Norton was right; visions were sometimes abstract. She needed facts to find her family, not images to get her hopes up, then dash them when it proved to be something else. It was a waste of magic, and for Mrs. Norton to indulge these girls was most irresponsible and—
“Ah, yes, Miss Dovetail,” Mrs. Norton said, waving a hand forward.
Sera ground her teeth. Of course, the woman pretended not to see her all year, except for now, to put her on display for the gifts for which she was often shunned and criticized.
“Perhaps you can shed some light on the topic and show us which of these tools your people use to glimpse into the future?”
Your people.
Seeming to notice her discomfort, Mary raised her hand. “Mrs. Norton, seventhborns are known for their second sight, not for divination so much.”
“Yes, yes, but her kind are quite skilled in the Aether-related fields. Now, Miss Dovetail, come demonstrate for us.”
Sera’s heart pounded. Her kind?
Mrs. Norton clapped her hands, addressing the class. “How lucky we are to have a seventhborn in class with us. Not many have the pleasure of a live demonstration such as this, of that you can be sure.”
Sera chuckled bitterly; she may just as well have been on display at the zoo. Mary turned in her chair, her gaze apologetic. The other girls merely stared expectantly.
“Well, then. Come forward, Miss Dovetail. We haven’t all day,” Mrs. Norton said.
Sera rubbed her fingers, every fiber within begging her to refuse, to remain seated. She was not their sideshow at the circus. Still, meeting Mrs. Norton’s resolute stare, Sera knew the woman wouldn’t let this go, and she couldn’t afford an argument, not now when a referral and finding her family was in her future.
Hauling in a breath, Sera stood, wiped her damp palms on her skirts, and spun to the class. Their stares pierced her skin with cold, and though fully dressed, she shivered. For the first time since she stood before Aetherium doctors two years ago, she felt naked and exposed. Anger twisted her insides but, focused on the table in the front of the room, she raised her chin high and set one foot before the other, her boots tapping sharply on the hardwood floors. She did this for her family.
She reached the end of the aisle and followed Mrs. Norton behind the table. Though she’d never come into contact with any divination tools, a strange energy hummed from the instruments, as though calling to her magic. Sera swallowed. As long as she kept calm and controlled her magic, she would be okay.
“Move your hand over them and choose which you’d like to use.” Mrs. Norton then said to the class, “Unlike our wands that grow with us and we trade in as our powers mature, a magician will find that items such as these and other scrying tools choose them. Which one of these speaks to you, Miss Dovetail?”
Sera walked down the line. When she passed the crystal ball, her stomach tightened and, against her best attempts, she stopped, rooted to the ground. Damn it. She’d hoped to have no connection, but her flaring magic said otherwise.
“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Norton moved forward. “An orbuculum. Very tricky. Used for both fortune-telling and scrying, it requires a keen sense of control, as we must feed our magic into it slowly, something I am afraid you lack. But we will try anyway.”
Sera’s cheeks warmed, but meeting Mary’s gaze and soft smile, Sera’s anger simmered, and she was thankful not to be alone.
“Put your hands upon it and clear your mind. You must fill it with your magic, creating a bond. Come along, girls,” she said, motioning the class forward.
The class congregated around the table, their excitement palpable. Sera’s hands trembled. As if the new lack of personal space wasn’t nerve-racking enough, now she had to use a crystal ball to tell her fortune. What would it show? Would she somehow see the faces of her family? No, she wouldn’t get her hopes up, however much her heart stuttered at the possibility.
She set her hands flush on the cool orb. The glass vibrated beneath her fingers, and although she tried to remove her hands, the crystal seemed to suck them against the surface. At once, she sensed an emptiness in her consciousness and knew it was the crystal ball now linked to her. The void tugged at her inside, like a taut string pulling at her powers. Beyond the void, Sera sensed a veil, and if it was lifted, she would find spirits waiting to speak. It nudged at her soul, begging her to reach out to them, but rejecting it, she let her magic flow into the crystal until it droned in her ears, low and constant.
Mist filled the orb slowly, twisting and curling within. By and by, the smoke thickened. Unsure of whether she was supposed to guide her magic or not, Sera simply let her powers wade in the void, focused on the openness and freedom she sensed within the crystal.
The smoke pulsed and thinned in parts, and a slender face formed within the glass.
“What do you see, Miss Dovetail?”
“Nothing yet,” Sera lied, as a fine mouth, nose, and lovely gray eyes revealed Barrington’s face. Sera stifled her shock as his image floated in the smoke.
The mist throbbed, and Barrington’s image twisted and reformed into a figure with shoulder-length brown hair. Sera gulped, her hands trembling.
“Clearly you see something, Miss Dovetail. What is it?” Mrs. Norton snipped.
“Probably the hovel she’ll end up living in,” Susan whispered. The other girls laughed. But Sera couldn’t care about the girl and her damned prejudice. Not when she was supposed to be predicting her future, and yet it was her past that drenched the smoke.
“I see…smoke and…”
Sera, Sera, in a cage…
Her breath caught in her throat, as though it were hands—his hands wrapped tightly around her neck. There was no way he could be in her future—he was dead, done by her own hand. Yet his smoky figure turned to her, those beautiful brown eyes boring into hers, those lips capable of the sweetest kisses pulling up into that cold grin.
Sera trembled. Had she summoned him by mistake, the same way she had with the murder victims? This didn’t feel like her previous summonings, but she’d experienced only two. Surely there were variations. And Barrington warned her against summoning without an anchor. How would she find her way out of it without an anchor? Her breaths quickened.
“Oh, do stop being so dramatic and tell us what you see,” Mrs. Norton chided.
The smoke vibrated. Sera, Sera wants to fly.
“No!” Sera pushed away the crystal ball and shuffled back from the table.
“Put your hands on the ball, Miss Dovetail. We are not finished,” Mrs. Norton said.
Sera shook her head. “I didn’t see anything.”
Mrs. Norton unsheathed her wand, her thin lips pressed tightly. “I will not have your insubordination today. You will put your hands back on that orb, or so help you.”
Sera glared at the woman. Whatever pain Mrs. Norton thought herself capable of inflicting, Sera was certain she’d met worse. And if not, she would weather it not to see that face in the smoke again. “No.”
The woman clutched Sera’s hand, her teeth bared. Sera struggled, but Mrs. Norton jerked her forward to the table, forcing her hand onto the crystal ball. Sera’s magic rattled and crested, and the moment her hand touched the orb, it flew off the table.
Mrs. Norton gasped and lunged to reach it, but it slipped through her fingers. A sparkling crash resounded as the ball shattered on the floor now covered in shards of glass glinting like diamonds.
“You stupid, useless girl!” Mrs. Norton grasped Sera’s arm, digging her nails into her seventhborn mark, and shoved her aside. Sera tripped on her own feet and crashed onto the floor. She hissed at the pain radiating up her arms and the shards of glass puncturing her palms. Small beads of blood sprouted from the cuts, quickly gathering into pools in her hands. Yet, she’d much rather see blood. She would rather see death before beholding that face again.
…
Sitting across from Headmistress Reed later that morning, Sera was certain seeing death was a possibility, if Headmistress Reed had her way. The woman already hated her, and as per Mary, every other seventhborn, including her own sister. As the eldest of seven children, Headmistress Reed had been forced to care for her siblings after her father met his demise at the end of his own wand. Though Sera’s academic career hung in the balance—as well as her employment with Barrington—her thoughts strayed toward more fearsome contemplations. Did her siblings hate her the way the headmistress abhorred her own sister? Had Barrington been right? Did her father find solace at the bottom of a liquor bottle, leaving her siblings to fend for themselves? She gulped. Was he even still alive, or did he willingly vacate life like the headmistress’s father?
Sera pushed the thoughts from her mind. Though her palms ached from the cuts and crackled under the now-dried blood, she pressed her hands together, her mood sinking. How could she let a mere spirit get her into this mess? He was dead, and even if he manifested without being summoned, all she had to do was order him to leave. She needn’t fear a ghost, especially of the monster who had taken so much from her. She couldn’t allow him to take her dream away as well.
As Mrs. Norton explained the day’s events with much hysterics and theatrics, Headmistress Reed stirred her tea with measured twirls around the cup. She was a rather pretty woman, with long limbs that she moved gracefully, like a dancer. Sadly, she constantly wore a pinched expression, as though she spent her day tasting bitter things.
And just as bitter were her punishments. She’d already had Sera go days without a meal, forcing her to sit in the dining room as everyone else indulged. And after Sera blew up the bust of Patriarch Aldrich, she’d had her stand at the crux of both the girls’ and boys’ towers for an entire day, holding a portrait of Patriarch Aldrich above her head, without rest, for everyone to see. Headmistress Reed was never one to favor corporal penalties. No, humiliation was her preferred method. Still, Sera sat up straight. She would accept whatever the headmistress wished, so long as it wasn’t expulsion. Heaven forbid, expulsion.
Once Mrs. Norton was done, the headmistress tapped her spoon on the side of her cup, a delicate ting that was much too loud for Sera’s tattered nerves. “Destroying school property again, Miss Dovetail?”
“It was a—”
“I didn’t ask you to speak,” she said calmly, though Sera sensed an undercurrent of violence. She brought the cup to her lips, took a small sip, and set it back on the saucer that she then moved aside. She smoothed a hand along her desk delicately, then clasped her small hands on top, so tight her knuckles blanched. “Apparently you think because I can’t expel you, that you are free to behave as though above your birth order.”
Sera blinked. The headmistress couldn’t expel her?
“You are a stain on this Academy, Miss Dovetail,” she went on, “as is your kind on the magical community. If it were up to me, I would send you to the nearest pit to live out the rest of your disgraceful existence. But seeing as you are under the Aetherium’s jurisdiction, I am allowed to discipline you only within my means.”
In spite of her imminent punishment, Sera’s mind caught on the headmistress’s words. She often wondered why she hadn’t been expelled, and now it made sense. She was under the Aetherium’s authority, and if her guess was right, that meant specifically under Mr. Delacort’s direction. But surely even Mr. Delacort had his limits. Could it be Timothy had something to do with it?
“I should forbid you to go to the Solstice Dance,” the headmistress spoke through Sera’s thoughts, “but I doubt anyone will go with you, much less dance with you, anyway.” She stared at Sera for a minute, her black eyes glittering as her mind clearly worked through suitable penalties. “No, no. We need something more to quell this peculiar fire within you.”
The headmistress’s chair creaked as she stood up and walked to the large window behind her desk, her boots tapping on the floor like nails into a coffin. The trees shook under a strong gust, and what leaves remained on gnarled branches brushed across the courtyard in a curtain of brown. The headmistress smiled, a little too slow and wide for Sera’s liking. “I think a bit of time outside will be ideal to cool you off.”
Her gaze swept to Mrs. Norton. “She is to stand outside and not come back in until she has read the entire Unmitigated Truths, cover to cover.” She looked at Sera. “And don’t think I won’t see if you try to leave. I’ll have a wonderful view of you right here from my window.”
Sera’s jaw clenched, her magic bubbling within. Curses rose into her mouth, but she fought against them. She did this for her family, whether they hated her or not. “Yes, Headmistress.” Sera stood and turned to a waiting Mrs. Norton.
“Ah, I almost forgot. Your cloak comes off.”
Sera paused, her hands trembling now. She took off her cloak and draped it over her arm. She would bear the cold, just as she suffered her year with Noah and her past two years at the Academy.
She took a step—
“And your shoes.”
Anger grew to a venomous thing, spreading through her, fraying her self-control. Would you like my stockings, too, she wanted to ask, but instead she knelt down and undid the ties to her boots. The headmistress was testing her, to embarrass her and break her. Sera slipped off her boots and picked them up. If Headmistress Reed expected tears or begging, she could die waiting.
Sera turned to leave once more.
“Twice,” the headmistress said. “You will read the book twice, and you are not allowed to come back in, not for supper or for rest.”
Anger shaded the fringes of Sera’s vision in red, her magic roiling in her veins, but before she could retaliate, Mrs. Norton seized Sera’s shoulder and tugged her away. “Come, ungrateful girl.”
Downstairs, she led Sera to the back garden doors and pulled them open, pushed the book into Sera’s chest, shoved her outside, and closed the door. Sera stumbled back, the cold blades of grass like jagged icicles underfoot. She hissed but trudged forward into the courtyard. When at a good distance from the school, she spun around and glanced up to Headmistress Reed’s window. The woman glared down at Sera, her teacup in her hands. The desire to burst the dish in her fingers flitted through Sera’s mind, but she set down her cloak and shoes beside her.
A bitter wind blustered and found its way beneath her skirts and collar. Sera stiffened and curled into herself, the cold like teeth gnawing at her skin, desperate for her bones. Hands trembling, she flipped open the book.
“The Unmitigated Truths of Seventhborns,” she began, her breath a thick white cloud hovering at her mouth.
By the third page, her teeth chattered so hard, she was sure she’d grind them to dust by the end of her punishment.
By the fifteenth page, Sera was doubtful she would live that long. Her body jerked as though wishing to conjure heat with every spasm, but it was useless, and soon she glanced down to make sure her limbs were still attached to her body. How would she ever survive?
Anger twisted within her, but shivering with cold, she was unable to grasp it. She closed her eyes and tried to focus, to touch the fire within as Barrington had taught her. Maybe she could conjure up a bit of magic to warm her insides, but the fire had waned, now a teardrop-sized flame dancing at the end of a wick.
Sera blinked her eyes open to find students pressed against the windows, all too happy to watch her suffer, but she had expected that. She looked away, and her gaze fixed on the first-floor window. A shiver coursed down her spine. Mrs. Fairfax lingered before the glass, her eyes focused solely on Sera. The woman tilted her head and raised a hand to the glass as though wishing to touch her. Sera gulped. Mary said Mrs. Fairfax had a terrible fall, and Timothy mentioned she might have been sick, but neither of those explained the longing and sadness in the housekeeper’s gaze as she slid her hand down along the window.
Sera glanced behind her. Maybe she looked at someone else? Finding herself wholly alone, she spun back to Mrs. Fairfax, but she was gone.