“I wasn’t sure if you’d make it,” Warren says breathlessly, no residue at all of “big man on campus” left in his tone.
“And miss the party of the year? No thank you.” The redhead straightens her skirt. She’s cute—cherry mouth, cherry hair, little upturned nose. And rich, that much is obvious from her pearls and the embroidered LM on her purse. Perhaps equally as obvious, Warren is definitely not her “fella.” Not in the way he wants to be, at least: I can tell from the way she’s already moved on, is scanning the crowd for someone else she might know who’s closer to the front. I hate this habit of mine—reading into the slightest gesture, the meaning of a smile, a pause. But since my father’s indictment, I can’t seem to stop. It’s like I’m watching everyone, waiting for the other shoe to drop, scouting whether anyone’s on the hunt for the full truth, and whether they’re starting to circle in on me.
“Sam’s roommate told Sasha who told Laura that Sam’s having three DC sorcerers here tonight,” the ginger prattles as she keeps surveying the crowd ahead. She still hasn’t seen or acknowledged me. “And they’re going to actually brew some sorcerer’s shine! Can you believe it? Sam’s auctioning off ten shots of it to raise money for the Christmas Ball.”
“Are you serious?” Warren matches her enthusiasm.
“That’s what I heard.” She sighs loudly and dramatically. “God, it’s so hot, all of it. I’ve been wanting to try shine so bad I’ve been dreaming about it. I better win one.”
For a second, I’m tempted to show her a magic that will send her into a dream so thick and hot she’ll never want to climb out.
“You’re really a sorcerer’s shine virgin?” I say instead, wedging myself right into their conversation.
The ginger turns her head, annoyed, in my direction. But then she stops, sizes me up, faintly blushes. I know she must like what she sees, they almost all do before they really get to know me. Sure enough, her cherry mouth starts to turn up like little stems.
“Lana Morgan, Alex. Alex, Lana Morgan,” Warren introduces us quickly. I notice he leaves my last name out of the introduction.
“Pleasure.”
Lana leans closer. “So are you a freshman too? I haven’t seen you around—I’d remember.” She lets her eyes linger on me. The line starts moving again, and we all take a few steps forward together. Warren uses the chance to reinsert himself between us.
“No, Alex is a friend from the old days, just along for the ride,” Warren says quickly. “He works for the government.”
I watch Lana’s interest deflate. “The government,” she says blandly. “How interesting.”
“I’m actually a sorcery expert,” I’m quick to add. “I’m training with the Prohibition Unit, the Domestic Magic division.”
“You don’t say?” Lana’s smile brightens a few watts, as Warren rolls his eyes next to me. “I bet you’re just chock-full of all sorts of fascinating information.” Then she shoots Warren a confused, fearful glance. “Wait, if he’s a Fed, what’s he doing here?”
Warren laughs out something like, “My thoughts exactly,” but I talk over him: “Let’s just say I value fieldwork.” I shoot her my smile, the cocky, off-center one, the one my last fling told me was the only reason she put up with me so long.
“So you’re one of those Unit men, the fun kind.” Lana meets my smile and wiggles her eyebrows. The corrupt kind, is what she means. The Unit’s notorious for making more money off bribes than their government salaries. It’s part of the reason I joined—the agency’s messy, disorganized, an easy place to get lost and hide. “Did you ever have to take a shot of shine, you know, as part of the job? To see what it’s like?”
“Absolutely.”
Her eyes become liquid, hungrier. “So what’s it feel like, drinking the sorcerer’s shine?”
The sorcerer’s shine—the magic spell without any other elements, water turned into pure magic touch inside a bottle. The primary reason the anti-sorcery activists were able to pass the Eighteenth Amendment, besides the record-high crime rate during the Great War and the media’s frenzy over a slew of high-profile magic robberies, and one of the most sought-after, addictive magic drugs on the black market. A spell quite literally stumbled upon centuries ago, goes the rumor, when some sorcerer was so drunk he forgot to add his spell’s other elements.
I hesitate before pulling out the little silver flask of shine that I brought, the one I made this morning before I took the streetcar into work and sat behind a desk for ten hours. I was planning on giving it to Warren as a thank-you, pawn it off as a score from the Unit’s temporary evidence room, but now I’m not in the mood. Now I want Warren—with his big Sigma Phi dreams and his golf-trip-wielding father and his borrowed hair toss—to feel what it’s like to lose something.