“Who are you?” Fort asked, staring at Gabriel in astonishment as Sebastian began yelling at the rest of the class for staring. “How did you know that about Sebastian and his mom?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gabriel said. “Now what are you supposed to be teaching me?”

“No, I’m going to worry about it,” Fort told him. “Why am I tutoring you? Why did Colonel Charles put me in a room with you? I’m only at this school because someone tried something like this before, and it didn’t lead anywhere good.”

Gabriel stared at him blankly for a moment. “I assume it’s a trick for learning healing magic, right?” he said, completely ignoring Fort. “From what I hear, it takes about a week to master each one, so if you can help me get done here faster so I can find a way out of all of this, that’d be great.”

Fort glared at him. “I just told you something personal at breakfast. You’re really going to hold out on me?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Guess I’m better at keeping secrets.”

Fort almost laughed. Was he serious? The whole stealing-a-book-of-magic thing had distracted him at first, but now that he’d be here for at least another week, the mystery of Gabriel was suddenly becoming a lot more important.

If Colonel Charles wanted Gabriel to become another savior like Damian, learning each kind of magic, that was going to be a problem, considering the book of Mind magic was now ashes.

But no, Gabriel wasn’t born on Discovery Day. That meant he wouldn’t be as talented at magic as those kids were. So what set him apart? Sure, he’d just intimidated Sebastian, which was amazing, but knowing how to pin an arm behind someone’s back didn’t really suggest magical savior.

Whatever was happening, clearly Gabriel wouldn’t be sharing. Fine, let him be secretive. That’d just give Fort more time to master teleportation, move on to the next Summoning spell, hopefully open a portal, and finally rescue his father.

“Okay,” he said to Gabriel. “I’ll teach you some of the tricks that I was taught, quicker ways to learn healing magic. But I don’t like not knowing what’s going on.”

“Like anyone does,” Gabriel said with a snort. “Let’s get moving. What’s the first trick?”

As Sebastian began lecturing the other students on proper use of the book of Healing, rubbing his shoulder, Fort found a pack of needles up on Dr. Ambrose’s desk. He grabbed two and brought Gabriel over to the book, which was sitting on the podium, open to the first spell, Heal Minor Wounds.

Like Jia had shown him back at the old school, Fort walked Gabriel through sticking the needle into his finger just enough to draw a drop of blood, then cast the spell to heal it, repeating until he’d mastered the spell.