At the same time, despite the worthiness of the cause, I still felt staunchly opposed to giving up my own blood. I really was afraid that doing so would subject me to more and more experiments. And I just couldn’t face that. There was nothing special about me. I hadn’t undergone a massive transformation via spirit. Lee and I hadn’t had anything in common. I was the same as any other human, any other Alchemist. I just apparently had bad tasting blood, which was fine by me.

“Tell me about the charm spell,” Ms. Terwilliger said one afternoon. It was a few days after Clarence’s, and I was still mulling over those events even while ostensibly doing work in her independent study.

I looked up from the book in front of me. “Which variant? The charisma one or the meta one?”

She was sitting at her desk and smiled at me. “For someone so against all of this, you certainly learn well. The meta one.”

That had been a recent spell I’d had to learn. It was fresh in my mind, but I made sure to sigh heavily and let her know in a passive aggressive way how inconvenient this was for me. “It allows the caster to have short-term control of someone. The caster has to create a physical amulet that he or she wears…” I frowned as I considered that part of the spell. “And then recite a short incantation on the person being controlled.”

Ms. Terwilliger pushed her glasses up her nose. “Why the hesitation?”

She noticed every slip. I didn’t want to engage in this, but she was my teacher, and this was part of my assignment so long as I was stuck in this miserable session. “It doesn’t make sense. Well, none of it makes sense, of course. But logically, I’d think you need something tangible to use on the vict—subject. Maybe they’d have to wear an amulet. Or drink something. It’s hard for me to believe the caster is the only one who needs enhancement. I feel like they would need to connect with the subject.”

“You touched on the key word,” she said. “‘Enhancement.’ The amulet enhances the spell caster’s will, as does the incantation. If that’s been done correctly—and the caster is advanced and strong enough—that’ll push the power of command on to the subject. Perhaps it doesn’t seem tangible, but the mind is a powerful tool.”

“Power of command,” I muttered. Without thinking about it, I made the Alchemist sign against evil. “That doesn’t seem right.”

“Is it any different from the kind of compulsion your vampire friends do?”

I froze. Ms. Terwilliger had long since admitted to knowing about the world of Moroi and Strigoi, but it was still a topic I avoided with her. My tattoo’s magic wouldn’t stop me from discussing the vampire world with those who knew about it, but I didn’t want to accidentally reveal any details about my specific mission with Jill. Nonetheless, her words were startling. This spell was very much like compulsion, very much like what I’d seen Sonya do to soothe Clarence. Vampires could simply wield it unaided. This spell required a physical component, but Ms. Terwilliger had told me that was normal for humans. She said magic was inborn for Moroi but that we had to wrest it from the world. To me, that just seemed like more reason why humans had no business dabbling in such affairs.