Chapter 5: Fuck Me, I’m the Protagonist

"How did somebody film me bleeding before it happened?" Dante held his phone beside the darkened card, comparing the photograph with his own unmarked hand.

"A recording can be faked," Rhea said. "We know it shows you. We don’t know when it was made, or whether any of it happened. Let’s get the device checked before we decide it can see the future."

She asked him to stay beside the bench while she took out her phone. Dante lowered the gym bag onto the seat and listened as she called Admissions, giving his name and explaining that they had found a witness device in his invitation.

"The stored image shows Miss Vale assessing him," she told the person who answered. "We haven’t brought him inside yet. Could you ask her to meet us at reception?"

Rhea waited for a reply, thanked them, and ended the call. She put her phone away before taking back the gym bag, keeping the sealed card in her other hand.

"I’d feel better if the fake picture had picked a fake shirt." He pulled at the loose thread on his cuff, then stopped when she warned him that damaging evidence would not improve the explanation.

Rhea led him through the Admissions doors and gave his name to the receptionist. She directed them away from the waiting line to a side counter, where Dante set down his invitation and offered his hand when she asked. The receptionist placed his palm on a scanner. Light passed beneath his skin, then the screen declared OCCUPANT NOT VERIFIED.

She cleaned the glass and tried his other hand. Same result.

"It’s attached," Dante told the receptionist, lifting the rejected hand. "Came with me this morning."

"I can see that," she said, giving the scanner another look.

"Good, because I’ve had a thing inside a box, a thing inside a letter, and now my own hand needs a reference."

She turned the scanner away from the waiting line. Dante was ready to offer a foot when someone spoke from the office.

"It means your reading doesn’t match the one attached to the booking," a woman said from the reception office doorway. "It does not mean you have failed to bring the correct hands."

Miss Vale wore the green blouse from the picture, with reading glasses on a chain and a silver pin holding up her dark hair. She was the member of staff Anika had sent him to meet. Dante wished the first thing he knew about her was her name, rather than how she looked while taking his blood.

She came over and compared the moving picture with his cuff while the receptionist placed his invitation in a clear sleeve. "Rhea, take the trapped device to the equipment room and have it checked by itself. Don’t connect it to a university desk. We don’t know what else it might do."

"Text me when they find something?" Dante offered his contact screen. Rhea saved it, giving him his first exchange of numbers with a woman who wasn’t delivering food.

Rhea left with the sealed card and her gym bag while the receptionist returned Dante’s invitation. Miss Vale asked him to bring it and his phone upstairs, where they could discuss the reading away from the waiting line.

He followed her past reception to a glass elevator overlooking the courtyard they had just crossed. Miss Vale pressed the button for the next floor, and Dante watched the cafe drop below his shoes before deciding to look at her tablet instead.

"Anika’s message mentions a window and the catch on a box," she said as the doors closed. "Tell me what you did each time, starting with the window."

Dante described waving his mother toward the door, the pressure running down his arm, and the window flying open. Then he explained how he had pictured the catch sliding along its track while he tried to open the audition box. For once, somebody wanted enough detail about his hand that he could leave out the cow costume.

"Did you feel the heat before the catch moved too?" Miss Vale asked.

"Yes, but that time I was trying to do it. With the window, I was just waving."

She asked him to show her where the pressure had started and noted his answer. "Don’t try either again on your own until we understand what’s happening."

"You actually believe I did it?" He forgot the voice he’d prepared. His best achievements usually needed the words on my account before anyone took them seriously.

For a moment, excitement pushed the fear aside. Magic had happened because of him. He had not bought it, downloaded it, or watched somebody better do it through a screen. "Fuck me, I knew I wasn’t an NPC," he said, then saw her waiting with the tablet. "That means a background character. Please don’t write it down."

"What would you prefer I wrote?" Miss Vale asked as the elevator opened.

"Something that sounded like I’d spoken to a woman before."

She laughed. "We’ll work on that after we stop you opening windows across the room."

Miss Vale led him along the upper corridor to an assessment room and opened the door. Dante stopped on the threshold. The white desk, the two chairs, the clear cube: he had just watched himself bleed here.

She left the door open and pointed out a red switch in the desk. "That stops the test if either of us needs it to. The cube measures the magic in a small blood sample, so you won’t have to cast another spell. We can also wait for the device report, or just talk today."

"All our assessment rooms use this layout," she said when he showed her the photographed image on his phone. "That accounts for the furniture, but I cannot account for your cuff or my clothes yet."

He walked to the open door and looked into the corridor before returning to the chair. People were passing the office with bags and drinks, and a staff member was showing a student toward another assessment room. Miss Vale let him check without calling him back.

"Can you explain each part before you do it?" he asked, pulling the chair out himself. "The last person called it an examination and started going through my drawers."

"I can, and you can ask me to repeat anything." She moved the tablet where he could see it. "We begin with what this measures."

Dante stared at the cube. He wanted to know whether he could learn magic and whether this school could teach him. He also wanted to stop being afraid that an angry wave might send another window flying. The test had a purpose he understood now, although the picture still made him want to leave.

"What if it says I’m terrible?" he asked, and she told him that learning was what he would be here for. He looked at the cube again before asking what happened if he was good.

"Then we teach you before you hurt yourself," she said, pointing to the blue light in the desk. "I realize neither answer comes with a throne."

Dante had not mentioned a throne. He decided that showed admirable restraint on his part.

"Can you stop if I ask?" Dante kept his hand away from the tabletop until she said yes and showed him the red switch again. "Then I want to know what I can do, even if the answer ruins the speech I’ve been working on."

"Most answers do," she said, setting her tablet beside the cube. "Your booking has a reading from an outside test attached to it. It doesn’t match you. I want a fresh reading we took ourselves, so we can correct the record and discuss your school offer."

He should have called Mom. Instead, Dante put his phone beside the invitation and answered Miss Vale’s question about fainting at blood. He’d call with a proper answer; that excuse had survived every report card.

Miss Vale passed the tip of her hairpin through a blue light in the desk, waited for his nod, and steadied his hand. Her touch made him forget the picture, although the prick brought his attention back with embarrassing speed.

A drop of blood fell on the cube, just as it had in the recording. Dante pulled his hand back when three question marks appeared where his name had been. The test had failed to identify his magic, and Miss Vale reached for the stop switch before he could ask why.

The door slammed, the room lights went out, and the lock clicked shut. Miss Vale hit the red switch, but the cube kept glowing on the dark desk.

"Please sit down, Dante. We never finished your interview."

Dante knew that voice. It was the woman from the fake job interview, the one who had entered his bedroom after he refused her test. Her box was locked away at the dry cleaner, but she had found a way to speak through this machine.