My encounter with Susan at the motel had left me worried that people were going to kick up a big stink about me being in town and call my parents. That didn’t happen. I steered clear of Chelsea and Melissa’s families, and the few who happened to recognise me in town just assumed that everything was fine. Most people, to my surprise, didn’t recognise me at all.

“You look different,” Chelsea shrugged when I mentioned this.

“How can I look different? I was here a few months ago!”

“And did everyone recognise you then?”

“I… I don’t know. More did than this time, though!”

“Yeah, well, you’d had a haircut. It’s getting kind of long.”

I ran my fingers through my hair self-consciously. I generally didn’t bother getting it cut at school, and then during the holidays, Mum would make a fuss and arrange to have it done. “It’s just hair.”

“You’ve had the same haircut since you were ten, now you don’t. Boom. Different person.”

“And your clothes,” Melissa said. “You’re dressing differently.”

I looked down at my clothes. “I am not.” I wasn’t walking around in mage robes or anything. I was wearing pants and a hoodie, and it felt weird as it always did, but I was pretty sure I remembered how Australians dressed. “I always wear this kind of thing on holiday.”

“You don’t normally dress entirely in red.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it again. There was no way to really say ‘it’s the colour of my school uniform and I didn’t really think about it’ without sounding stupid. During the holidays, I’d taken greater care and worn more colours because I’d been careful to look as much like I used to in front of my parents, but this time I’d just gotten red clothes and hadn’t thought much of it.

“I… like red,” I lied lamely.

“It looks good on you,” Melissa said. “It’s just different. Of course most people won’t recognise you.”

“Also, you walk different,” Chelsea pointed out.

“I walk different?”

“Yeah. You used to be all… deflecty. Mouthy as all fuck, but in a deflecting kind of way. You moved like you didn’t want to start shit or be noticed.”

“Well, yeah,” I said, tapping my chest. “Curse. Starting shit or getting too noticed could’ve been super dangerous, remember?”

“We do,” Melissa assured me. “But most people didn’t know why, so you just look different.”

“Good to know.”

A few days later, Max showed up, and he didn’t look any different out of mage robes – he was just Max, stiff and precise in his movements wherever he was. I’d seen him out of robes before, of course, whenever Instruktanto Cooper picked us all up for school, but he usually wore a suit fit for a funeral on those occasions. When I spied him in the hotel lobby, he was dressed in the most casual outfit I’d ever seen him in – shiny black shoes, crisply ironed slacks and a shirt buttoned all the way to the top button, collar severely symmetrical. Had he… waxed his goatee? Surely not. It must be a trick of the light.

When he spotted me, his posture relaxed and he broke into a smile. He pulled me into a brief hug. “Kayden! How have you been?”

“Fine, fine. No complicated mage politics or strange revelations about destiny or magic for days, very relaxing. You and Kylie?”

“Great! Kylie’s family is amazing!” He launched into a long monologue highlighting how hilarious one of Kylie’s uncles was while we headed up to our room, and it occurred to me that I’d never actually heard of any of the people he was talking about. Despite how important they obviously were to her, Kylie rarely spoke of her family in much detail. But then, neither did I. Or Max. Was that weird?

The next day, walking to the cafe where we’d arranged to meet Chelsea and Melissa, Max asked, “Kayden, are you aware that we are being followed?”

I didn’t turn around. “Tall guy, pink tie?”

“Yes.”

“That’s just Sekura Refujeyo’s bodyguard. They’re worried I’m going to get kidnapped by mad scientists or something.”

“Hmm. They didn’t send me any annoying bodyguards. I’m offended.”

“They probably assumed that a legacy mage had all the protection he needed. You’re probably already a kidnapping target, right? This is old hat for you.”

Max shot me a puzzled look. “What, exactly, do you think my life is like?”

“Oh, you know. Giant mansion where you eat gold-plated oysters and spend your days in your secret high-tech research lab to escape the political wordplay that could get you assassinated if you offend the wrong person.”

Max rolled his eyes. “Can you even gold plate an oyster?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had gold or oysters. I assumed you’d know, since your life is so full of both. I imagine you gold plate them and then float them in the world’s most expensive champagne. While waiting to be kidnapped.”

“I assure you that I’ve never once in my life had to worry about being kidnapped.”

“That’s probably just because you’re so well protected. I bet that the mage family world is just full-on Game of Thrones back there, and everyone leaves you alone because they’re terrified of your wrathful grandma using her terrible power of being able to tell if their diamond jewellery is real.”

“I’ve never seen Game of Thrones,” Max admitted.

“Me neither. I think Liss has read the books, though. Oh, there she is!” I waved at Melissa and Chelsea, already sitting at the cafe.

“Hi, guys,” I said as we sat with them. “This is Max.”

Chelsea looked him up and down. “So you’re the rich mad scientist?”

Max lifted an eyebrow. “That’s what Kayden has told you about me?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I never said that. In those exact words.”

“He tells us what’s going on in his life. I read between the lines.”

Melissa cleared her throat. “This delightful master of first impressions is Chelsea,” she said. “I’m Melissa.”

“It is very much a pleasure to meet you,” Max said, a smile spreading over his face, and I was a little shocked to notice that it was a real one. I usually expected him to put on his composed facade with new people or social situations, but I’d been around him enough to tell the difference, and he hadn’t pulled up the mask. That thought had me smiling, too.

“So you’re a mage,” Melissa said.

“Well… yes. A mage student. Like Kayden.”

“Do you know a lot of magic?”

“I’m well versed in magical theory. My practical skills are limited.”

“That’s a lie,” I said. “Max is a genius runecrafter. He can mock you up a scroll to do just about anything in like, ten minutes.”

“A massive exaggeration. And runes don’t count. Runes are just writing things down, that’s basically theory.”

“Oh, sure, you can make theoretical lights and sounds and explosions. Out of the question,” I added to Chelsea, seeing her eyes light up. “If he makes you something impressive in this cafe, we’ll have hell to pay when we get back to school. The sekkie guard over there would absolutely tell our surveyanto, and she’s never been impressed by our impulse control.”

“The what would tell who?” Chelsea frowned.

I was saved from having to explain by a cafe employee bringing her a sufficiently distracting slice of cake.

“So you know a lot of magical theory,” Melissa said. “Are you allowed to tell us about it? About how it works?”

“Umm… yes? It’s not exactly a secret.” He shrugged. “But I’d hate to bore you.”

“Bore us? Talking about magic? I’m pretty sure that’s not possible.”

“Words that could only be spoken by someone who hasn’t had to sit through our classes,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Magical theory classes are fascinating,” Max said.

“They are not. The most exciting thing to ever happen in basic magical theory was that time Alania melted that metal statue and burned her hand.”

“Yes, see, that was an excellent example of somebody losing control of the fulcrum in a heat transferrence change spell…” Max blushed, and stopped talking. “Anyway. Lessons where nobody goes to hospital are also interesting.”

“Nobody ever goes to hospital at our school,” Chelsea grumbled.

“Except for that time both Matt and I went to hospital by ambulance, and I was arrested for attempted murder with a curse?” I asked.

“Well, yeah, okay, there was that one time.”

“Maybe,” Max said, “people just go to hospital a lot in whatever school Kayden is in.” He looked at me. “Maybe you’re just terrible luck.”

“Now there’s the true curse,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“You’d have a spell, too, right?” Melissa asked Max. “Like Kayden?”

“Yes, but it’s boring. I’m more interested in seeing what your little town is like.”

“It’ll be exciting for you,” I said, “being somewhere that isn’t a lab or a grand palace.”

“I live in a house in the city, Kayden.”

“Spending your days reading dry textbooks and contemplatively munching hand-raised pheasant roasted over the coals of burning antiques.”

“I’ve never had pheasants. I had a cat, once. Named him F’Lar.”

Melissa’s gaze sharpened. “What, like from Pern?”

Max blushed again. “It’s a good series.”

“I know! I love Dragonriders of Pern! Although the first few books are the best, I think.”

“Well, they do have a better sense of wonder, but I think the added context of the later books really adds to – ”

“Okay, yes, but it’s a bit of a bait and switch to go scifi after – ”

“I don’t think it really counts as ‘going scifi’ though; the mood doesn’t change with the addition of spaceships so they haven’t lost anything, it just enriches the lore and – ”

“It does enrich the lore, I have to give you that, but it means that retrospectively the series becomes – ”

I met Chelsea’s gaze. She grimaced and put her head in her hands. “You brought another one,” she groaned.

“In my defense, I did not know he read Pern,” I said. “And I warned you that he was a nerd.”

The two Pern fans weren’t listening. They continued to debate the something something narrative themeing of something while Chelsea finished her cake. We eventually got up to leave, and Chelsea pulled her jacket off, revealing a long, ugly-looking scar on her upper arm I’d never seen before.

“What’s that from?” I asked.

“Mm? Oh. Cut it on a rain gutter.”

“A rain gutter?” Max asked.

Melissa rolled her eyes. “Does Kayden ever get weird injuries?”

“Oh, yeah. All the time.”

“Chelsea’s the one the learned it from.”

Max’s eyes widened. “And you’re both still alive?”

Chelsea snorted. “Oh, you’re a worry wart, too.”

“It’s a facade,” I said. “Max does more dangerous stuff than us. In our first semester he was deconstructing a magical artefact in our bedroom, no safety precautions or nothing, and it exploded in his face, sending shards of metal everywhere.”

“Not everywhere,” Max muttered.

“Oh. Is he why you learned to make that healing potion? It works great, by the way. Closed this up in about ten minutes.”

“And it still scarred?” I asked. “It’s not supposed to scar.” Had I made it wrong? No, I couldn’t have; I’d used some of the same batch on myself and it had been fine.

Chelsea shrugged. “It’s just a scar.”

“That’s not the point. It isn’t supposed to scar.” I took her arm and inspected the scar more closely, then relaxed a bit. The scar wasn’t all that visible, actually; it just looked that way because it was, for some reason, surrounded by a cross hatching of tiny stretch marks, providing contrast and making it look lumpy. That was puzzling in its own right. Why would such a neat scar have so many stretch –

I frowned at Chelsea. “Chel. How deep was this cut?”

She shrugged again. “Not that deep? It didn’t need stitches or anything.”

“Deeper than skin level, though, right?”

“It was pretty deep,” Melissa cut in.

“It’s fine now,” Chelsea hastened to add. “It’s all healed.”

“You remember how when I gave you that potion, I told you it’s only designed for skin? How you shouldn’t put it on a deeper wound? Because this looks like you rapidly healed skin over a wound, and the separated flesh beneath it pulled the new skin all to hell and scarred it up.”

“When did you become the group’s mother hen?” Chelsea asked. “That’s Melissa’s job.”

“Hey!” Melissa protested.

“He’s been like that for months,” Max shrugged.

I glared at him. I wasn’t going to say it in front of the girls, but if someone didn’t want me being protective then someone shouldn’t have run off behind my back to nearly die in an underground spell labyrinth. I took Chelsea’s hint and dropped the scar thing, but something really, really bothered me about it. I couldn’t stop glancing at the tissue made rough and obvious by the stretched skin around it. I found myself relieved when she put her jacket back on, and I could concentrate on having fun with my friends.

The next few days went surprisingly well. I kept expecting something to happen – my parent to randomly show up, or Max’s, or someone to track me home and harrass me over the familiar thing, or to get a message that some horrible thing had happened to the school or Kylie or Saina in my absence. But soon enough, we were saying goodbye to the girls and getting into Instruktanto Cooper’s van, and I felt Kylie’s magic flow back into me as we went to pick her up, and we were heading back, once again, to Skolala Refujeyo. I was already missing Chelsea and Melissa, but it was good to be within range of Kylie again. Not that a week apart was a particular strain, but it was annoying, even when one of us nipped outside at school for a few minutes. I was used to the feeling of the magic now, even when it got antsy when… when Kylie was…

When she was…

Huh.

Something suddenly made sense, and I couldn’t help grinning to myself. I was a fucking genius. Max and Kylie picked up on my energy and shot me curious looks, but I didn’t dare say anything in the back of the van, where Instruktanto Cooper could hear us. I stayed still and quiet and tried hard not to vibrate out of my skin with jubilance at my realisation, at my masterful deduction, at what I’d all but given up on achieving and had suddenly done, Chelsea was going to be so amazed, this was great. We got back to the school and all three of us marched right back to our room and I closed the door and grinned at my roommates like a madman.

“Kayden, what the fuck?” Kylie asked.

“I’m a genius,” I announced. “Behold my mastery. I bet everyone thought I’d given up, but I did it. I figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

“I know where in the world we are.” My cheeks hurt as I grinned even wider. “I’ve discovered the location of Skolala Refujeyo.”