Chapter 32: Evil Needed a Better Schedule

Dante locked his door, put his phone facedown, and waited for the man destined to change the magical world to decide what happened next. Apparently that man needed to remove his shoes and check whether he had a clean shirt.

His good hand remembered Anika’s waist while the dressed one caught in his jacket. He freed it carefully, hung the jacket over his chair, and threw away a sandwich wrapper. A secret headquarters should probably smell less like old mustard before receiving visitors.

The hall creaked, and he looked toward the door. Was the assessment voice waiting outside? He checked his bathroom, including behind the toilet, then confronted a spare roll that seemed entirely innocent. Jett would never hear about the search. Some knowledge belonged to the commander alone.

He washed his face, kept the bandage dry, and changed into a clean shirt. His room remained quiet. Nobody needed rescuing, nobody was watching, and his impressive inner voice had started asking whether the shirt was on backward.

Anika had wanted another dance, and Posey kept saving seats beside her. He sat at the desk to consider the evidence. Clearly, the hidden world had recognized something in him. That explained the magic, the attention, possibly even the alarming number of attractive women.

Or they liked him, suggested a smaller, deeply inconvenient part of his mind. He dismissed that, then wondered why ancient destiny seemed easier to believe than a woman enjoying his company. One required a secret universe; the other required him to stop arguing with a smile.

At sixteen, a girl had agreed to lunch with him. He’d spent the evening planning what to say, then arrived early with two drinks because she’d mentioned liking one. He remembered checking his shirt for stains before walking over, determined not to ruin his chance.

Her friends had been waiting. She asked whether he’d seriously believed it was a date, and everyone laughed while he held both drinks. The second one bothered him most afterward. He had brought evidence of how badly he’d wanted her answer to be real.

He spent the rest of that year eating in a bathroom stall, balancing his sandwich on its wrapper until the shoes outside moved away. Later, alone in his bedroom, he practiced being someone people would never laugh at. That man always knew what happened next.

Now a real woman had put his hand on her waist, and his first instinct was still to search for the audience. He hated that. Anika hadn’t earned suspicion because someone else had been cruel, and Posey shouldn’t have to defend every seat she saved.

He looked at his locked door. Nobody had sent him here, and he wasn’t waiting for people to leave before he could eat. He had wanted an hour alone after the pub. A quiet evening could be something he chose, without becoming a punishment.

Dante opened his notebook and found The Unwritten beneath Professor Bell’s exercise, written large enough to concern an employer. An excellent title, until his reminder to buy socks caught his eye. Even mysterious men needed socks, preferably before inventing a uniform for their followers.

Followers, he repeated privately, enjoying the word. Did he have any? Jett might follow him to a food counter, provided he paid. The women listened sometimes, which felt much better than he had expected. He should probably learn what happened when they believed the wrong sentence. ℴ

Magic should have been simpler. He watched a spell, pictured what it did, and sometimes the result appeared. Of course he could do that; everything about his life had prepared him to imagine being impressive. Except imagination hadn’t explained the heat in his fingers or the nosebleeds.

He laid a pencil on the clear part of the desk. One tiny lift would prove he could manage himself. Nobody would know, and if it worked, tomorrow’s lesson could become a casual demonstration of what he had already mastered.

His good fingers moved toward it before he stopped. Excellent plan, his quieter thoughts said, right up to explaining to the nurse why his private breakthrough needed fresh bandages. He returned the pencil to the notebook without casting. Mastery could survive waiting until morning.

Waiting felt like losing, which annoyed him enough to write it down. He had wanted magic for years, and now everyone kept asking him to use less. Then he remembered Professor Vale needing warmth after he freed her, and Posey’s headache during practice.

Those events had other possible causes. He knew that, yet his first excuse had arrived before he’d finished listing them. He drew two columns for facts and guesses, leaving the corrected dates beside the photograph he’d mistaken for a prediction. His notebook didn’t get to flatter him.

The stolen recordings, the assessment voice, the figure wearing his face: someone had used them, but he couldn’t yet prove one organization controlled everything. He could picture its underground meeting room perfectly. Unfortunately, that proved only that he’d watched enough films to furnish one.

Tomorrow he would ask Jett what he remembered between the messages and listen past the jokes. He wanted an answer, even one that spoiled his theory. If a hidden enemy existed, being wrong about its methods would help it far more than giving it a dramatic name.

He wrote three plans beneath the columns: ask Professor Bell about stopping a spell, invite Jett to watch, and ask Anika to lunch. The third needed a budget. He rejected the cheapest cafe because of its chairs and kept money aside for the return shuttle.

A stranded dark lord explaining bus fare would make a poor ending to a date. He could already hear Jett recommending a cape, then charging extra to hold it while Dante sat down. He nearly reached for his phone before deciding the invitation should be his own.

He wanted Anika to laugh because she enjoyed being there. He also wanted another excuse to touch her waist, because becoming thoughtful had apparently done nothing to improve his morals. Asking about her research sounded interesting too, especially when she forgot to hide how proud she was of it.

He pictured her stealing a fry while he listened. No witnesses, no evidence case, no speech about powers beyond understanding. Just lunch with someone who had asked to spend more time with him, followed, if he behaved well enough, by another date.

Dante set his alarm and practiced the invitation in his ordinary voice. The other one made coffee sound compulsory, which probably explained several problems with his approach to romance. He reached the part where Anika could say yes, then looked back at the notes about Posey and Professor Vale.

He had spent years imagining women standing beside him while his power grew. Now he needed to find out whether standing beside him was what made them sick.