It took her a month to realize that she was learning faster than the other regulars at the safe house, and another three months to realize just how much faster. By that point she had seven stars, which was as many as Jared had, and he’d been at it for three years. Probably at Brakebills she would have been just another apprentice, but she wasn’t at Brakebills, was she, she was here, and here she stood out. The others just didn’t seem to have any flare for the theoretical side of magic. They learned their spells by rote, but they weren’t interested in the basic patterns that underlay them. Only a few of them went into the deeper linguistic work, the grammars and the root systems. They preferred to just memorize the syllables and gestures and forget the rest.

They were wrong. It sapped the power of their casting, and it meant that every time they started a new spell they were starting over from scratch. They didn’t see the connections between them. And you could forget about doing any original work, which Julia was already looking forward to. Along with Jared she started an ancient languages working group. They only got four other members, and most of those were there because Julia was hot. She kicked them out one by one when they didn’t keep up with the homework.

As for the hand exercises, she worked doubly hard at those, because she knew she wasn’t naturally gifted at them. Nobody kept up with her on the hand exercises, not even Jared. They didn’t have her taste for pain.

Much as she hated Brakebills, with a red glowing hatred that she kept carefully burning in some inner brazier, blowing on it if it ever sank too low, she could see why they kept things exclusive there. A lot of riffraff came through the Throop Avenue safe house.

Julia had always had a nasty competitive streak. In the past she’d done her best to keep it under wraps. Now she reversed that policy. With no one to check her, she nurtured it and let it flower. As Brakebills had humiliated her, so she would humiliate anybody who couldn’t keep up with her. Hey, magic’s not a popularity contest. Throop Avenue would be her own private Brakebills. Any visitor who came to the Throop Avenue safe house rocking a level equal to or less than Julia’s had better come to play. Any bullshit you were walking around with, you would be called on.