Chapter 93. Sleep with Someone
Grit leaned even closer to me, eyes glinting.
“I thought we were supposed to read about skeletons?” I said, leaning away.
“Never mind the skeletons! Tell me about you two. Minnelil just smiles cryptically when I try to ask her.”
“What if I just scowl aggressively?” I said, but she looked ready to start shaking me so I lifted my hands between us. “Fine, I guess we like each other.”
“Everyone has been able to see that for a while, but it’s different now. You’re not trying to be sneaky about it anymore.”
“I guess we aren’t. Frederik asked us two to come for a dinner,” I said, stopping to consider it. “I didn’t even turn him down.”
“Right, you should make sure what kind of a dinner invitation it is. Did I tell you about the time Fek told the council—”
“I heard,” I said, groaning and waving her quiet. “Don’t tell me again. I think this one is safe. After everything I’ve done lately, people won’t try anything stupid.”
“You are building a reputation, yeah. People have been whispering about the Lunch Hall attack since it happened. People were really impressed you swatted away that dart.”
“They were impressed with that? What about the skeletons and everything else?”
“People are used to skeletons,” Grit said and shrugged. “It’s not like the teachers went around explaining that something unknown on the mountain just made its way through all the wards and attacked the school directly. Falar and the Chancellor are muttering about it all the time while Minnelil and I work on the ritual preparations. They think we can’t hear, but Jextor shouts all the time and Falar raises his voice when he gets frustrated with Jextor, which is basically all the time.”
“At least you get it,” I said. “Will the ritual be… fine? Do you think?”
“They are really taking it seriously,” Grit said, leaning her elbow on the table and resting her chin on her palm. “It can’t be worse than just waiting?”
I nodded. “That’s what I said to Ferne too. My life will be so boring once Falar makes that thing his pet.”
“You’ll have Minnelil, though,” Grit said, squinting at me with a mischievous smile on her lips.
“Fair,” I said.
“And I’ll have Falar.”
“No!” I said.
I managed to get Grit to open the book again and explain the stupid triangle to me. I guess it was important, even though I had done it already once. The book talked about the theory so everything in it should have been applicable to any kind of a dead thing, but all the examples always used a human skeleton. It was sort of worrying. Why weren’t there any mentions of reanimating animals?
Grit said that reanimating animals would feel unfair and evil. Clickens screeched at her.
The logic seemed backward, but still made sense. I guess there was a lot for me to learn about being a necromancer and the world outside of the streets of Tenorsbridge. Had I really lived there for almost two years? I wondered what would happen if I ended up back there. There had to be tons of people more powerful than me in the city. I had been practicing magic for two months. How powerful were real mages? What were the guards even there for? What could three guys with metal hats do against people like me?
Grit was reading another classic on her bed. It had sounded boring. I was so lost in thought that I twitched when Fek sat on the opposite side of the table.
He glanced at me, then took out his book and opened it up. A bookmark with a black ribbon slid onto the table from between the pages.
“But you just came from the library?” I asked.
“Huh?” Fek said, looking up from the book.
“You came from the library. Are you going right back to reading? It’s pretty late. Since when do you use a bookmark?”
“It’s Falar’s book,” Fek said. “Firgl went really pale when he saw it and made me take this.” He showed the bookmark to me. It was blood red, with a stark white winking skull drawn on it. The black ribbon was shiny silk.
“Cute,” I said. “The book’s good, I guess?”
“Yeah! I can’t wait to try some of this stuff out when I can channel the Null. I bet I’ll be great at it.”
“At hiding?”
“You don’t have to look that dubious when you say it.”
Grit snorted from her bed.
“It’s supposed to be much easier than physical enhancement. I don’t need to keep myself alive at all, only to disperse the Null in a camouflage pattern reminiscent of the color-changing skin of some teratomes!”
“Not keeping yourself alive at all does sound like it’ll come naturally to you!” Grit shouted at Fek.
“You have to stop setting yourself up like that,” I said, drumming the table as I thought. “Making myself strong is more natural than anything else. I was really scared when I had to channel the Null outside of myself for the first time, so I’m not sure which will be actually easier.”
“Well, but you do everything backwards,” Fek said, waving a hand. “When are you going to teach me to channel the stuff?”
“Oh, Lina’s teaching people now?” Grit called. “I want in too.”
“No, wait,” I said.
“Yeah, she did Minnelil already,” Fek said.
“I figured. They looked so happy the next morning,” Grit said.
“Stop iiiit,” I groaned.
Grit winked at Fek. “Nice one.”
“Thanks!”
Minnelil opened the door and walked in, the letters gone. She frowned as she looked from grinning Grit to Fek and then me. “Why are you two grinning like hyenas?”
I stood up and walked to her bed. “No reason. Want to push our beds together?”
The room became quiet. I was on my way to drag her bed across the room, but I stopped. “I mean…” I said.
“Oh,” Minnelil said.
“She has a weird sleep-schedule,” Fek said. “You should get a big bed and also have separate beds. We have nothing to put into that corner if you take her bed away.”
Grit nodded. “That actually makes sense. Otherwise she’s going to keep waking you up constantly.”
“You stopped teasing me about it the instant she stepped into the room, is that it?” I asked, turning to look at them.
“Well, now it’s serious,” Fek said.
Grit nodded. “Yeah, what Fek said.”
“Oh,” Minnelil said.
I walked up to her and offered my hand out. “Sorry.”
“You did surprise me a bit,” she said, smiling and taking my hand.
“I would like to sleep with someone. Next to someone,” I added, glancing at Fek and Grit with my eyes squinted.
Fek looked at the ceiling and Grit at her toes.
Minnelil chuckled and pressed my hand with hers. “I do have a weird sleep schedule. This feels like a big step for you, but we can talk about that another time.”
I sighed and pulled her to the table. One of its edges had been broken by Clickens, but Grit had sanded the corners smoother with her palm, so there was less chance of getting splinters. I patted the middle of the table with my palm. “Look, guys.”
Grit and Fek glanced at each other and sat down opposite me. Minnelil sat next to me, still holding on to my hand.
“I wasn’t in great shape when I came here. I was angry and scared and haunted and maybe I still am,” I said. “But you let me stay here and didn’t stab me when I was sleeping. I’ve decided that I’m going to deal with it.”
“Why would we have stabbed you?” Fek asked. “Not being stabbed doesn’t sound like something you need to deal with.”
“I’m not used to it, okay?”
“I think we teased her too much and broke her,” Grit said to Fek in a stage whisper. She looked to me and reached for my hand. “You’ve had it rough, we get it.”
I took her hand and her palm scraped on my skin. There was still a shadow of a gash in it from the time Clickens had clawed her. “I don’t know, but maybe that doesn’t matter.”
Minnelil leaned her head on my temple. “Lina, everyone needs friends.”
The last time I had friends, the Kertharians had killed them all. I wouldn’t get away from it even though it had happened years ago. I was sure I would hear the screams, feel the heat of the fire, and taste the smoke again. I hoped I wouldn’t, but I knew I would, and I feared the hoping. But holding their hands, one very soft and one very hard, made it better for now. Fek nodded at me from the other side of the table, smiling.
After what he had told me in the Cleaning Closet, I knew he had his troubles too. Maybe he was even more an orphan than me.
Clickens jumped onto the table, making all of us flinch. The dark fog billowed out from between the bones of its spine and from inside its skull. It didn’t look like a real cat, but it wasn’t only a collection of bones anymore. The air near it smelled like ice, making the inside of my nose ache.
It padded across the table and came to bump me on the nose with its skull.
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t attack anyone in the dorm anymore. You’re too dangerous.”
“And I’m going to blast you with light if you try,” Fek said. “I’m dangerous too nowadays.”
Grit rolled her eyes. “You’ve always been dangerous.”
“But nowadays I’m also dangerous to other people,” Fek said, thumping his chest with his fist.
“No, you’ve been a general hazard the whole time you’ve been here,” she said.
“Please, Lina is having a serious moment,” Minnelil said with a deep frown, but I saw the way the golden motes in her eyes bounced and danced like they were having fun.
“Nah, I’m done,” I said, standing up. “You all ruined it.”
“Nice,” Fek said. “We were your friends already, so you didn’t need to do a whole speech about it.” He looked at Grit and then to Minnelil, nodding at both of them. “I mean it. You know I do.”
“Huh.” I guess I had no choice but to believe it, if even Fek was taking things seriously. I nodded at him. It didn’t help the feeling that I was making a mistake, opening myself up to being hurt, one way or another.
“Lose no one ever again,” Falar had said.
I clenched my fingers together and the Null crinkled in my fist, a dark ball of power opaque and cold and dangerous. It had taken no effort at all. I opened my hand and let the Null dribble through my fingers. Clickens jumped down from the table and sat below me, jaw wide to catch the beads of black before they dissipated into the air.
“You have to teach me that,” Grit said.
“Me first,” Fek said.
“I’m not going to sleep next to you if you keep doing that,” Minnelil said. “Your hands are going to be ice-cold.”
I chuckled, waving off the rest of the Null and pushing my hands into my pockets. Maybe they would have time to warm up again. I grabbed on to the edge of the bed. “Come on, and help me move it.”