“NO, NO, NO WAY!” I laughed loudly enough that Rahul’s enormous gray cat, Alphabet, jumped off my lap. I stretched my legs—she’d been ensconced on my thighs for well over an hour, ever since we’d finished eating and moved to the couch. My feet had both gone tingly.
“I swear to God,” Rahul said, “I couldn’t make it up.”
“What did you do?”
He tucked his shoulders up around his ears, his eyes wide. “What was I supposed to do? I gave him the bathroom pass and told him to tie his sweater around his waist.”
Alphabet rubbed her head against his ankles, and Rahul leaned down absently to scratch her behind the ears. His shirt rode up over his side, and my mouth went dry at the stretch of skin that was revealed.
“I’m so glad I’m not interviewing that kid,” I said, tracing the seams on the couch so I wouldn’t reach out and touch the place where the taut skin of his stomach disappeared into his jeans. “I wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye.”
“Ah, he’s alright,” Rahul said, stirring an unconscionable amount of sugar into his after-dinner coffee. “He’s just, you know. A teenage boy. Not that I was ever like that, but you know. Lots of boys are. Probably.” He took a sip of coffee, grimaced, and added more sugar. “So, can you tell me who you are interviewing? Or is that like … confidential?”
I was more than a little intoxicated by the way he leaned toward me from the opposite end of his couch, watching me with rapt attention. It wasn’t an I’m-going-to-kiss-you-now lean; it was an I-can’t-wait-to-hear-what-you-think lean. This is what it feels like to do work that people want to hear about, I thought.
I was used to people asking uncomfortable questions about my job. Everyone always wanted to know whether I had naked photos of politicians, whether I had ever touched a dead body. Whether I had secret cameras and microphones. They were the kinds of questions that were never really about the work—the kinds of questions that told me way too much about the people who asked them. The questions Rahul was asking about this murder case were more … wholesome, somehow. I finally had something going on that wasn’t just seedy—it was intriguing, captivating. This is what it feels like to be a real detective.
So I barely hesitated. “Well, technically I probably shouldn’t tell you, but—”
He held up a hand. “Then don’t tell me. I can’t keep a secret to save my life.” He smiled at me, and I hated how badly I wanted to tell him which students I was looking at most closely. How much I would have told him, even though I knew it was a bad idea. “Is there anything you could tell me that wouldn’t be ethically weird?”
I flipped through the case in my mind—it was all right there at the surface, the result of my two-day case data binge. “Um … shoot. I don’t think so. There’s a lot of information, but it’s all in play right now. I don’t know what’s going to turn out to be important, you know?”
“Too bad.” He winked at me and refilled my wineglass, which was only about half-empty.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” I said, trying to be twinkly and charming so he knew I didn’t mean it.
He still frowned. “I would never,” he said gravely.
“I know,” I whispered with a wink that didn’t belong to me. “I’m making fun of you.”
“Oh, thank God,” he laughed. “I’m sorry. I know I get too serious sometimes, I just. You know. I’m not that kind of guy, and … I’d hope that would be a deal-breaker for you. Not that it has to be—oh, god, I’m overthinking this so much, aren’t I?”
We both laughed, and I felt a flutter of excitement. A deal-breaker, he’d said, which meant there was a deal. We were a deal. It had been an embarrassingly long time since I’d felt like I was going to be a deal with someone. I couldn’t remember the last time that anyone had made me feel so excited about being a deal.
It was that excitement that had stopped me from flaking on the dinner date, even though there hadn’t been nearly enough time for me to polish the tarnish off myself. I’d arrived late, my hair still wet, feeling uncertain that I’d know how to pass as a sane person. He’d greeted me with a cold glass of crisp white wine and asked if I minded taking my shoes off. Then he’d given me the smallest, sweetest, chin-cuppingest kiss in the four seconds before a timer started going off in the kitchen. He’d shouted for me to watch out for Alphabet before disappearing around a corner, leaving me to meet the giant gray cat and take my shoes off and touch my lips with the tips of my fingers, wondering if this was for real.
It almost felt like it was for real.
Dinner had been perfect. The scallops had been fresh and buttery, and I’d made a sound when I ate the first one that had made Rahul turn very red. When I’d expressed amazement at the fact that they hadn’t spoiled at all in the three days since he’d bought them, he’d looked bashful. “Actually,” he’d said, “I got Tabitha to cast an entropy-delay cosper on them. Don’t tell anyone—I think those are pretty strictly regulated. I’m not totally up on cosper law, though—”
“I promise not to tell anyone,” I’d laughed. “But only if you promise to make me these scallops again every day for the rest of my life.”
He’d bitten his lip, and I’d turned very red myself, which made us even.
After dinner, he’d cleared our plates, and I’d followed Alphabet to the living room. It was tidy, but not spare—not bachelor-y. There were pictures of him and people who looked like his family scattered among the half-dead potted plants; I’d inspected them as I kneaded my toes down into a huge knotty woven rug in a dozen different colors. In one picture there was an older woman with Rahul’s nose and eyes, and a young woman with his smile laughing at both of them. Mom and sister, maybe. Another picture with someone who he told me was his ex-boyfriend, now his best friend, an amicable breakup that had turned into something like brotherhood. I wondered when I’d get to meet them, then scolded myself for assuming I’d get to meet them, then allowed myself a sweet wafer of hope—it could happen. This might happen, Ivy.
I’d also explored Rahul’s bookshelves, crammed with books of every genre and profoundly disorganized. I had leaned my ear up against the shelf to see if the books had anything to tell me about Rahul, but the only thing I’d heard was Alphabet, yowling from the couch until I sat down and relented to her inspection. By the time Rahul had joined me, I was blanketed in cat hair and my fillings were rattling with the intensity of the purring.
It wasn’t until Alphabet finally got off my lap that I realized how long Rahul and I been sitting there, just talking. He was still looking at me with that I-can’t-wait-to-hear-you glow in his eyes, and I wanted to tell him everything, and I wanted to kiss him, and I wanted to wrap my legs around his waist and trap him against me until the sky turned gray at dawn.
But then Alphabet returned to my lap and started kneading my legs, and her tail brushed under my nose, and when I looked back up at Rahul he was laughing at me.
I rolled my eyes, what can you do, and started petting Alphabet, who was butting her head against my hands and purring like an outboard motor. She settled her considerable bulk onto my legs, and I gave up all hope of getting blood back into my toes. “You know, I can’t tell you anything, but I would love to get your insights on something,” I said. “For the case, I mean. It would be really helpful.”
“Ohmygod, anything,” he said, delight sparking in his eyes. “Does this make me a consultant? An expert witness? I feel so important.”
“Oh, definitely. An expert consultant. Very important.” I scratched the spot where Alphabet’s tail met her back. “So, here’s what you can help me with: what do you know about emotional manipulation magic?”
“What?”
“You know, like … spells that make people want to do what you tell them to do, or that make them feel scared when you’re mad. Like if you were yelling at someone, and you could make them feel like you were the scariest thing on earth, but with magic…? What?” He was looking at me like I’d asked him if he had a recipe for preschooler casserole.
“Are you talking about theoretical dynamism?”
“Uh, sure.”
He stirred his coffee, his spoon scraping against the bottom of the cup. “I don’t know much about that. I only took the theoretical magic prerequisites so I could get my degree—I didn’t do any advanced courses or anything. Tabitha could probably tell you more about the theory than I could.” He was looking everywhere but at me.
“I guess I could ask her,” I said, sipping my wine. “I just thought you might know, since you’re interested in these things. And shoot, you probably know more than I do, at any rate.”
“Why do you want to know?” he said, the words taut. I’d said something wrong, I could taste it. For a few seconds, Alphabet’s purring was the only sound in the room.
“I just want to understand it before I take it into consideration when I’m looking at the case.” He looked at me blankly and I realized I’d forgotten that I needed to explain. “Oh, wait—I got ahead of myself, sorry. I do that sometimes. I’m thinking that the magical emotional manipulation thing might be a factor in the case because I think one of the students at Osthorne is doing it. To everyone.”
Rahul let out a staccato burst of laughter. It didn’t suit him—it was too sharp, somehow. “Oh, well, I can tell you for sure that that’s not the case.”
“How do you figure?”
“Oh, man, theoretical dynamism is—it’s pure theory, Ivy,” he said, crinkling his nose. “God, I’m sorry, I just—I thought you were asking if I knew how to do it.” He reached across the couch and took my hand, looking at me with a relieved smile. “And that’s not something I would ever want to know how to do. I wouldn’t even really want to think about how to do it. That’s like, hyper-advanced pseudo-theoretical stuff, and even if it was possible, it’s illegal. And even if it wasn’t illegal—it’s wrong, you know? Like, morally wrong.” He worked his fingers between mine and gave my thumb a tap. “I mean, I might be the bad boy of the physical magic education world, but…”
“Wait,” I said, swallowing my own heartbeat as his thumb idly bothered at a callus on my knuckle. “If it’s pseudo-theoretical, how can it be illegal? That doesn’t make any sense.”
His brow creased. “It’s just like anything. It’s just like…” He tapped my finger again as he thought. “It’s like electromagnetic pulse manipulation. Just because nobody can do it doesn’t mean it’s allowed.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Isn’t that like outlawing unicorn breeding? What’s the point of making something impossible illegal?”
Rahul tilted his head. He squinted at me like we were speaking two different but peripheral languages. “What? How do you not know about this? It’s like … the first thing they teach you in Intro to Theory, when you’re learning about Cautious Exploration. It’s first-day-of-school stuff.” He said “Cautious Exploration” like it was a principle, like the scientific method or gravity. Like I should know it inside and out.
My heartbeat stuttered again, but in the wrong direction. This was it—this was the other shoe, and it was dropping right on my head. I rubbed Alphabet between the ears as I tried to figure out a solution. It was just because he’d never asked if I was magic. That’s all. It was just so easy.
And it felt so good.
I’d never wanted Tabitha’s powers—I’d always been too angry to envy her, too bitter to want to eat off her plate. I didn’t want to be magic. But I’d been tasting the life I could have had if I had been born equal to Tabitha. If I were magic, I could laugh with people. I could talk to them as if I were on their level. If I were magic, I could eat scallops here every night with Rahul.
I did what I do best: I scrambled for a diversion. “So it’s really impossible? Theoretical dynamism?” I pawed through my memory, frantic. Not yet, not yet, not yet. “Is that anything like theoretical alkalinity, or is it closer to a more clouds-in-water method?”
“Uh, kind of, yeah,” he said slowly. “More fists-of-sand than clouds-in-water, though, or at least that’s my understanding? To do it, you’d have to be able to trace a person’s emotional state to the exact source, and then trigger a response. No one can do that. No one knows where emotions come from, not for sure, right? I mean, there are ideas and psychology and everything, but none of it is concrete.” He was picking up speed, getting into the subject. I held my breath: Maybe he’ll forget what he was about to figure out. Maybe we can just have one more date. Just one more before I have to tell him, please, please, please. “In order to manipulate someone’s emotional state, you’d have to have an intrinsic, molecular understanding of how emotions are created and executed, but we don’t even have a basic concept of that right now. A couple of people have been accused throughout history, but everyone’s pretty sure they were just, like … super-charismatic. To do something like that, you’d have to be the most powerful mage in the history of magic. Seriously, it’s just not possible. And the ethical implications are—” With his free hand, the one that wasn’t still holding mine, he puckered his fingers at his temple and then exploded them outward. Mind-blowing.
Everything seemed to zoom together: lead filings drawn to the magnet of a suspect. “So if someone could do that—the dynamism thing—they’d be like. Power coming out of their ears.” I shifted under Alphabet’s weight as I considered the possibilities, and Alphabet stood up with a grumpy mrrrrg noise. She paced in a circle before sitting on the cushion between Rahul and me with her paws tucked underneath her chest.
“Oh, for sure. In more ways than one,” Rahul said. “They’d already have power—like, intrinsic power—but the kind of person who could change the emotional states of other people at will? They’d rule the world. Seriously, you never did this as an ethics-of-theoretical-research debate? I thought everyone did that, like reading Catcher in the Rye in English class.”
“I never read Catcher in the Rye,” I said absently. “So if a student could do that, the dynamism thing, they’d be more powerful than anyone else in the world,” I continued with a dawning sense of horror. “They could do anything, right? They could do anything.”
Rahul ducked his head, catching my eye. “Ivy?” His hand tightened around mine, and I shook my head, trying to get my bearings.
“Sorry, sorry, I just—you just helped me realize something huge about the case.”
“I’m really glad,” he said, and his eyes crinkled like he meant it. “I don’t know what I helped you figure out, because you sound kind of crazy right now, but I bet it all makes sense from the inside, huh?”
“Yeah,” I laughed, “and it would all make sense from the outside if you knew who I was talking about. Oh my god. It all works.” I felt giddy. I felt high. I’d figured it out, I had it, it was all coming together. I was going to solve a murder.
Rahul squeezed my hand again and bit his lip. “That’s so great. Ivy, where did you go to school?”
“Andrew Jackson Memorial in Woodland,” I answered automatically. “God, it all fits. She does have the power, she just doesn’t know it yet. Or maybe she does know it, and—” My eyes landed on Rahul’s face. He looked stunned. I realized too late what I’d said. “Oh.”
He blinked at me, and I saw the understanding dawning there. Still, he gave me another chance. “I haven’t heard of Andrew Jackson Memorial before,” he said slowly. “Is it a charter or something? Out of the national districting program?” When I hesitated, he clarified for me. “The national districting program that encompasses all twelve magical secondary schools in the United States? The national districting program run by the MDOE?”
I swallowed hard, and tried to map a memory of his hand on mine, knowing it was the last time I’d feel it. “You wouldn’t have clarified that if you didn’t already know, Rahul,” I whispered. I set my wineglass down on the coffee table, bracing myself for the way things would land after they fell apart.
He sat back against the throw pillow behind him. His face was very still, caught in the instant of falling-down shock when he’d realized that he didn’t really know who I was. The air was cold on my hand, on the places where his fingers weren’t. “I guess not,” he murmured. “So … so you’re…”
“I’m not magic,” I said. I hadn’t felt the injury of those words so deeply since Tabitha had left me behind. It knocked the air out of my lungs, and I had to catch my breath. It had been coming, and I’d hoped I could hold it off, but I’d been fooling myself. I didn’t just like Rahul for his looks. He was smart. Too smart to be drawn in by my incompetent attempt at playing pretend. Deal-breaker, I thought. I clenched my jaw and prepared to cauterize the wound. “I’m not magic. I’m not special.”
“But you’re—”
“I’m just a regular old person. No powers. No anything.”
I spread my hands open so he could see how incapable they were of doing all the easy things he taught fourteen-year-olds to do. Rahul was staring into his empty coffee cup, and slowly, his eyes found their way to my hands, then to my face. He stared at me like he wasn’t totally certain who I was, or who he was. I didn’t want him to be looking for differences between Tabitha’s face and mine, but then he said it: “But your sister—”
Hot, thick shame crawled up my throat. Why not me? “Yep. My sister. Tabitha got it all, I guess. She’s the special one. Sorry I tricked you into thinking I was special too.” I cleared my throat. “I’m not. You picked the wrong sister. Guess it’s better for you to find that out now.”
“Ivy, I don’t … I mean, it’s not … I don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand?”
“I don’t understand why you lied.” He took my hand and looked at me with a compassion that scalded me. “Why would you pretend?”
I swallowed a laugh. Really? It felt so obvious.
But then I let myself look into his eyes and hear the thing he was trying to say to me: that I didn’t need to pretend. Not for him. It almost sounded like he thought it was true.
“I guess I needed—” I started, and his brow furrowed. I tried again. “I … it’s not easy for me, being here. Seeing Tabitha, and all the magic, and everything. And I realized that I could kind of step into a different life for a little while. A life where I’m … better.” I swallowed hard, tried to figure out a way to turn this thing around so I wouldn’t have to reveal more underbelly, but he was staring at me hard and I was helpless to stop the words from coming out. “I started telling a story, and the story was about who I could have been if I was like Tabitha instead of like me, and then you were there, and I figured out that I could maybe have you be part of the story too, and—”
Rahul let go of my hand and rubbed his face with both of his palms. “So this was, what? An experiment?”
“No, I just—”
“I’m not a character in a story you’re telling yourself, Ivy,” Rahul said, and he dropped his hands from his face and looked at me with something halfway between anger and pity. “I’m a person. I’m a real person who really liked you. I thought you liked me, too.”
“I do really like you,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “No. You liked lying to me, and you liked your story. That’s different.”
“No, Rahul, I really—”
“I think you should go.” He looked at Alphabet instead of at me. “I think you should go, Ivy. And I don’t think you should call me again until you’re ready to see me as a real person instead of as a … a piece in whatever game you’re playing right now.”
I couldn’t see him through the tears that blurred my vision, and I was grateful not to have to see his anger. His disappointment. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—I’m so sorry.”
“Me too,” he murmured.
I turned around, tripping over the cat on my way to the door. “Sorry,” I said again, and it was too loud, and I was jamming my shoes onto the wrong feet, and it was all falling apart. Just like always. I screwed it up, and it fell apart, and now I was losing the one good thing I’d finally started to think I could have.
He didn’t get up to see me to the door. I closed it behind me, and I walked out into the place I always seemed to end up: alone in the night, walking away from yet another mistake.