“Do you want me to teach you some tricks?” he asked kindly.

That brought my smile back. “What you do is a little larger than life too. Maybe I’d be better doing something a little more suited to my level. Adrian said I should get a gun or take a self-defense class.”

“That’s good advice.”

“I know. Scary, huh? The Alchemists do gun-training, but I’m not a fan. I do pretty well at classes and theory, though.”

He chuckled. “Very true. Well, if you change your mind, let me know. After working with Angeline, I’m ready for anything. Although… to be fair, she’s backed off a little.”

I thought back to my last real conversation with her. Her fight and suspension had only been yesterday but felt like years ago. “Oh. I sort of had a talk with her.”

“What kind of talk?” he asked, surprised. “I told you not to worry about my personal life. It’s my problem.”

“I know, I know. But it just kind of happened. I told her that her behavior was out of line and that she needed to stop. She was pretty mad at me, though, so I wasn’t sure if it had gotten through.”

“Huh. I guess it did.” The next words obviously were a big concession. “Maybe she’s not as bad as I thought.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “And look at it this way. At least her suspension means you don’t have to worry about her at the dance.”

From the way his face lit up, it was clear he hadn’t realized that yet. A few moments later, he toughened up again. “If there are attacks going on like this, I’m going to have to be extra cautious with Jill—especially at the dance.” I hadn’t thought there was any way Eddie could be more cautious, but probably he’d prove me wrong. “I kind of wish Angeline was going.”

Most of my classes were distracting enough to keep me from thinking too much about last night, but Ms. Terwilliger’s independent study was different. It was too quiet, too low-key. It gave me a lot of time in my own head, bringing back all the fear and self-doubt I’d been trying to ignore. For once, I copied and notated the spells without really memorizing them. Usually, I couldn’t help myself. Today, my mind wasn’t there.

We were almost halfway through the period when I finally tuned in enough to really process what I was working on. It was a spell from Late Antiquity that allegedly made the victim think scorpions were crawling on him or her. Like so many of Ms. Terwilliger’s spell books, the formula was convoluted and time consuming.

“Ms. Terwilliger?” I hated to ask anything of her, but recent events weighed too heavily on me.

She looked up in surprise from her paperwork. After the cold war we’d entered into, she’d grown used to me never speaking unless spoken to. “Yes?”

I tapped the book. “What good are these so-called offensive spells? How would you ever use them in a fight when they require concoctions that take days to prepare? If you’re attacked, there’s no time for anything like that. There’s hardly any time to think.”