One could almost forget it in the buzz of the morning, as if it were some decisive thought or promise made to oneself in the solace of the night before, washed away by sleep and the urgent necessity of the impending day. The rush to brush your teeth, get dressed, eat, get to class.

And yet, it was there in the bright sunshine on the walk to class, just as it had been beneath the moon the night before. It was there when Jacob was eating and when he was peeing, and when he was trying to concentrate on his readings. It was there when he was talking to Blake, when he was thinking about how to apologize to Camilla, when he was down at the lounge after classes with the other second floor boys.

A constant sensation in his mind, as if someone had surgically inserted a taut little wire in the middle of his cerebral cortex. Whenever he reached for magic it flared, reminding him of his impulsive idiocy.

The day after the fiasco he'd gone to Professor Alhammadi, who had promised to give him some extra work if he won his first tournament match, hoping that the work could distract him. The extra work turned out to be the perception spell, which was a little disappointing because Jacob already knew about it, but Alhammadi made up for this by handing Jacob a spiral notebook with exercises and tips for learning the spell, which Jacob eagerly devoured. But training ended, and the bind still hung in his mind.

He didn't sleep well that night, nor the next. He wanted to meet up with Camilla and Tanaka to see if they had any ideas about what to do next, but Camilla was avoiding him in class and wasn't talking to him and he thought it was best to give her some room.

But after two days he thought he was going to go insane. He couldn't just sit around and do nothing while time ticked away. Sitting at Magical Basics Thursday afternoon he knew he had to make a move or he would explode.

Ms Sterling wrapped up her lecture and the class started chattering and gathering up their belongings.

Jacob looked to where Camilla sat a few rows over and down with Grace.

"Library?" Blake asked.

Jacob shook his head. "I gotta talk to Camilla, and I have MW Club anyway."

"Isn't she pissed with you?"

"Yeah."

"What's up with that?"

Jacob gave Blake a long look. He hadn't told his roommate about any of it yet, but he deserved to know. It might protect him, knowing whatever the killer was, it wasn't a vampire. "I can't tell you now. Later, though."

"Okay," Blake frowned. "Good luck. I'll catch you later."

Jacob watched his roommate walk down the aisle and disappear through the auditorium doors along with a trickle of other students. Enough procrastinating. He just had to do this. Camilla was right over there packing her stuff up. His desperation acted as a motivator, and before he knew it he was marching over to her and Grace.

Grace saw him coming but didn't say anything. Camilla was putting her notebook in her tote bag.

"Camilla," Jacob said. "Can we talk?"

She looked up at him with narrowed eyes, then dropped her tote bag and folded her arms.

"I don't know. Depends on what we're talking about."

Grace shouldered her own tote bag. "Gotta go to rehearsal! I'll see you later! Bye!" Neither of them responded as she left.

Jacob ran a hand through his hair. Just say it. "I'm sorry about the other day. I wasn't thinking. I..." Christ, this was harder than he'd thought it would be. Should he give reasons as to why he did what he did, or would they just sound like excuses? Should he say what he would do differently, or would that sound too soft? "...I'm sorry."

Camilla hmphed. "Is that all you wanted to say?"

"No, uh, I was wondering if you'd meet later to talk about what to do next about the killer. I don't know what to do and I'm worried about the bind."

Camilla rolled her eyes. "You were extra special stupid that day, weren't you?"

"Well-"

"Fine. But you are going to listen to me from now on, and ask me about stuff before you do it."

"Okay. Is it cool if Tanaka comes as well?"

"Yes. He's part of it, isn't he?"

"You're right. I have MW Club right now but I'm thinking after that?"

"Fine."

"Thank you."

Camilla hmphed again.

Jacob sagged with silent relief. Thank god she didn't hate him. He remembered a tip Blake had given him. "Where are you going now?"

"To Fireball with Grace," Camilla said.

"I can walk you there."

"What about MW Club?"

"I can be a few minutes late."

If she liked that or didn't, he couldn't tell, but they walked side by side over to the library building. Camilla didn't say anything on the way over and Jacob didn't feel comfortable asking about the weather or something stupid, so he just let the silence be. It wasn't so bad, actually.

He left her at the door to Fireball Roast, saying he'd text her later about meeting up, then made his way back to the Richter Building for MW Club. That hadn't gone too poorly, he thought. She still seemed a little pissed with him, but he'd apologized and hadn't died, and she had agreed to help him later.

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He'd been wondering if he should go to MW Club with everything going on, but as he neared their club room he found himself desperate for a distraction that wasn't related to gruelling training, class, or the killer.

Malachi was there, as were a handful of others, but they were missing a good umber of the members. They weren't doing anything yet, just talking in small groups, so Jacob went over to where Malachi sat behind what would have been the teacher's desk, his long legs kicked up on it. Ever since the binding with Father Emil he'd been thinking a lot about what he wanted to do, what his options were.

"Jacob!" Malachi said, looking up from his book. "Glad you could make it."

"Can I ask you a question?" Jacob asked.

Malachi sat up. "Sure. What's up?"

"Do you want to be a magical ecologist?"

"Whoa!" Malachi chuckled. "Right out the gate with the heavy hitters."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to pry."

"No, no, it's fine," Malachi said. "My parents would want me to think about my career more frequently, I suppose. But to answer your question: I'm not sure."

"Oh."

"I don't think there's really a position called a 'magical ecologist.' There's researchers like the folks at the D'Angelo-Leonard Institute, and there's folks who do more exploration of the magical realm. Obviously, there's overlap between them but generally those are the two types of 'ecologist' in magic."

Jacob frowned. "I'd never thought about people doing exploration as a job, but I guess it makes sense."

"See that's the thing. It's not really a job," Malachi chuckled. "There are positions as researchers here and at other locations but the exploration, which is what I really want to do is trickier. There's no official position that the Order pays a salary to someone who just explores the magical realm. It's generally grant money given to researchers or experts who want to explore a specific biome, learn the ecosystems there, learn more about a specific kind of Consumer, etc."

"I would have thought if they have all these other positions they would have some people exploring the magical world."

"I think they used to be a little more prominent back in the early days of the Order, but it's an allocation of resources issue. The Order needs Rangers. They don't need explorers. Everyone is pushed to be a Ranger. I'm under pressure, obviously, to be a Ranger. I can cast a portal spell, that alone makes me more favourable for a Ranger position than about half the people that come through here," Malachi shrugged. "But, it might not be the worst thing. Rangers get to go to the magical realm a lot. They do the bulk of exploration that gets done these days."

Jacob had never thought of it that way.

"What about you? Why do you ask?"

Jacob shrugged. "I don't know. I'm just a little unsure about what I want to do."

"Well, the good news is that you've got plenty of time to figure that out," Malachi said. "Unlike me."

Jacob didn't know what to say to that.

"I hope the club has been helpful," Malachi said suddenly. "One of the reasons I started it was to get more information about magical ecology out and about. You can't enter a profession if you don't know it exists, right?"

"Malachi!" Emma called from the other side of the room.

"What?" Malachi leaned around Jacob.

"I need help with this question. It's for Biology class."

Malachi rolled his eyes. "Well, let's hear it. We can get everyone's input."

"Okay, the question is: Give two specific examples of symbiotic relationships in the magical realm. One must be mutualistic, the other commensal. Give the species of creatures involved."

"Sheesh, that's a doozy," Malachi said. "Leave it up to Dr Boudreau to hand out something like that for homework. Does anyone know an answer?"

A handful of shaken heads.

"Mutualistic is where both creatures in the relationship benefit, right?" This was Darius.

"Yes," Emma said. "I knew that, but I can't remember what commensal is."

Malachi eyed Jacob. "Do you know?"

"Commensal is where one creature benefits and the other is neither benefitted nor harmed," Jacob said. "A remora is usually an example. They're those little fish that attach onto bigger fish."

"Ah..." Emma said.

"But I don't know a magical example," Jacob said. "I didn't even think that was possible in the magical realm."

This was followed by several nods and sounds of assent from others.

"Really?" Malachi asked. "Why not?"

"Well, aren't all creatures made of magic? And can't all creatures consume magic? How does it benefit a creature to keep one around when it could just consume it instead?"

"Ah, but not all magic is created equal," Malachi said. He glanced around the room. "Do other people have the same confusion that Jacob has?"

Nods.

Malachi shot up out of his seat, moved to the whiteboard and uncapped a marker. "So, the cycle of magic works like the cycle of energy, right? Producers, Consumers, Decomposers. In cascading order. But what's to stop a Decomposer from feeding on a Producer? Anyone?"

Nope.

"It's the same reason why a carnivore can't feed on plants. The energy has taken a different form. In magic, Producers can utilize the latent magic in their surroundings. This latent magic is simple, uncomplicated. Raw, if you will. But it changes form when used by a Producer. Think of it as if it were being digested. The latent energy now becomes more complex, becomes more structural, becomes a part of the Producer's body or form. Consumers have evolved to utilize this more complex state of magic. They can't absorb or utilize the raw, latent magic in the magical realm, so they have to wait for the Producers to change the state of that magic, give it the structure and complexity so they can use it. By using it, they make it even more complicated. Likewise, Decomposers can only breakdown the most complicated structures of magic that are only produced by Consumers."

"What do you mean by complexity and structure?" Darius asked.

"Generally, latent magic looks like light, Producer and some lower level Consumer magic looks like silver blood, and the more complex, bigger Consumer magic look like little stars or lattice structures. When magic is used by a magical creature, it changes state, just like digested food."

"Oh!" Jacob smacked the table. That explained the silver blood that had come from some creatures, and the little stars that had exploded out of the Reaper when Jimmy had killed it.

"What?" Malachi asked.

"Nothing," Jacob shook his head.

"So, all that to say that not all creatures can consume all forms of magic. When human mages cast spells, we're 'digesting' the magic in a different way that makes it inaccessible to magical creatures, which is why they can't just eat your spells. But, with regards to Emma's question, this means that certain magical creatures won't attack other magical creatures. Which brings us to our first example for Emma's question. Will-o'-the-wisps and basilisks. Basilisks are a secondary Consumer, and will-o'-the-wisps are a Producer that looks like a little fiery orb. Will-o'-the-wisps nestle themselves in the scales of a basilisk for protection from primary Consumers, but this benefits the basilisk too because the signals the will-o'-the-wisps give off attract primary Consumers towards the basilisk, which are what it eats."

"What about commensal?" Emma asked.

Malachi grimaced. "I have to be honest, I'm a little surprised Dr Boudreau asked for that. there's a fairly well-evidenced theory in classical ecology that there is no such thing as a commensal relationship; that all commensal relationships are in reality just subtly mutualistic or parasitic in ways we cannot see yet. However, for the sake of the question, a good example is the glow sprite, a Producer, and the banshee, a Decomposer. The glow sprite sticks itself to the banshee and feeds specifically off the broken down magic the Decomposer gives off as waste. The Decomposer gets no benefit from this because it doesn't eat Primary Consumers, and the signal given off by glow sprites is minimal."

"Thank you!" Emma cried. She scribbled down the answer.

The questions spawned further conversation about how different types of creatures interacted, which eventually led down a rabbit hole of discussing how they evolved to these symbiotic relationships, which led to discussions of reproduction. It turned out the magical creatures were autogamic. They self-reproduced. According to Malachi, this was a process initiated by environmental factors in combination with achieved power levels that wasn't very well understood. What was known, was that the material that was the equivalent of DNA for magical creatures was constantly changing when they gained or lost magical power, and that increases and decreases in power level like Jacob had seen with the Dream Tiger were not uniform, but instead based on what aspect the creature was using the most at that point.

Before they had had a chance to crack open a board game or do trivia, the club's allotted time was over, and it was time for Jacob to meet Camilla and Tanaka.