Estelle was staring at her with astounded light green eyes. Finally, she laughed and shook her head. “I stand corrected. We’ll have your food right out, Lady Jade.”
“Just Jade is fine. Thank you, Estelle. It was lovely to meet you.” Jade grinned and Brady dragged her away to an empty table as he raised his brow at her.
“Really, fourteen magic classes? Which professor did you snub by not taking their class?”
Jade just stared at him. “I’m taking all of them, what do you mean?”
He laughed. “There are fifteen magic classes offered right now.”
She blanched, then reached into her bag to yank out her schedule and show Brady. He looked over it, then winced. “You’re missing Nature with Viscountess Delaney. Good luck with that one. She’s going to be…unhappy, to say the least, that you’re taking every magic class but hers.”
She laid her head on the table, groaning softly. “I forgot that it didn’t fit! I was thinking I had them all covered! I even met her! What am I supposed to dooooooo?”
“What’s the problem?” A new voice came from behind her, and suddenly it was no longer just her and Brady at the table as Eric and Stephen both sat down. Stephen looked concerned at the fact that she was gently banging her head on the table.
Pointing at Eric, she wrinkled her nose as she accused him teasingly, “This is partly your fault! Why didn’t we remember I’d missed a magic class!?”
Understanding dawned on them, and Stephen pulled her class schedule over from Brady, looking over it. He shook his head once he realized who’d been left out. “Delaney is going to be mad.”
Eric winced. “We didn’t put in Delaney’s class?” Jade nodded and he sighed. “We can… I have no idea what to do. Count Edmund is expecting you in his geography class, too.”
Jade winced. “We have to fix this somehow!” She pulled her schedule back, looking at it. “Oh, what if… She’s here on Tuesdays, and I have Tuesday mornings free. What if we asked her to tutor me before lunch?” She was a little loathe to give up the little bit of free time she’d managed to grab for herself, but she wanted to learn nature magic. It would also depend on if Delaney was willing to come early for her.
Eric sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll ask. If she realizes that’s the only way to have you as a student, she might agree. At least the fact that you want to take lessons should mollify her…” He looked a little stressed out at the prospect. Jade tried to smile reassuringly at him. She had the feeling he was going to get an earful about signing her up for every other magic class and missing Delaney’s.
After all, Hell hath no wrath like a woman scorned…
Chapter Five – Spymaster
Their food arrived shortly after, with Estelle coming out with another younger woman to drop off the very full trays. Even Eric and Stephen looked surprised at the sheer amount of food in front of Jade, and Eric asked tentatively, “Did the amount you need to eat go up?”
Jade already had a mouthful of food at that point, so she had to quickly chew and swallow the delicious goodness before she responded, “I pretty much convert food into magic. Did a lot of healing this morning and lost a bit of blood too.” It was only now that the two of them seemed to take into account the fact that her clothes had a bunch of gashes on them.
Looking sternly at Brady, Stephen asked pointedly, “Why didn’t you start with wooden blades? Was cutting her up really necessary?” His voice held just a tinge of menace and warning, and she smiled brightly at him. It was nice that he was so concerned, although it wasn’t necessary in this case.
Brady grinned and shrugged. “She’s a healer and she’ll learn faster with real consequences. She already made vast improvements, and now she won’t freeze up if someone comes at her with a blade. She already knows what it’s like to be cut, albeit shallowly. That’s not something you get with wooden blades.”
Jade was just happily munching because it was true. Had someone come at her with a knife, she’d probably have frozen up. She hadn’t even tried to dodge the mesmer when it came at her, though that might have been because of the hypnosis, which she’d had to fight extremely hard to just do a few things. The more non-lethal combat experience she got, the better off she would be. She’d probably need to find a skimpier training outfit so she didn’t tear up all of her clothes. If she kept using the same ones, they’d end up as rags.
Stephen seemed to look at her to check if she was okay with that, and when she didn’t raise any objections, he let it drop, only to pursue a new line of questioning. “Alright. So Jade, I hear something interesting happened at the gate yesterday.” He looked at her with a raised brow, as if he wanted her to confess.
She raised her brow right back at him, then replied sweetly, “Sure. I guess finding a doppelganger can be counted as interesting.” Since he hadn’t specified, she’d go with that rather than her trapping Christopher behind a wind wall. She was quickly scarfing her food at this point since she had a feeling of what he was trying to get at and it wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have in public.
Thankfully, Eric and Brady looked surprised. It was obvious they weren’t as well informed as Stephen, which made sense to her, given that they weren’t spymasters. Brady, obviously flabbergasted, asked, “You went up against a doppelganger yesterday?”
Jade laughed, shaking her head as she eyed the professors and students coming in. Most of the students were streaming past the doors to the upper floors, but a few of them entered with professors. She saw the royal trio of Will, Camille, and Victor coming in as well. Dismissively, she said, “No, of course not. I just identified it and then had the guards put a bunch of arrows in it.”
Brady and Eric were looking thoughtful, though Eric looked more relieved that she hadn’t personally fought it. “How did you figure out what it was?” Now that he knew she hadn’t been in immediate danger, he was curious.
She smiled. “I’ve got mana sense now. The mana around it was very different, almost shimmering with changing colors. It made me suspicious, and then when I touched it, I could feel it wasn’t quite human. After that, we just played Sherlock until we figured it out.”
“Sherlock?” Oh right, she needed to not use names from her other world.
“Ah, he’s the greatest literary detective of my old world.” She smiled and cleaned off her second plate.
“What’s a detective?” She almost choked when Stephen asked this question. Sure, she understood them not getting a Sherlock reference, but…to not even know what a detective was? That was just sad.
With a sigh, she explained, “A detective is someone who uses clues at a crime scene to solve the crime. So if there was a murder or someone went missing, they’d ask questions and stuff about when people last saw them, like if anyone heard anything unusual, if they were acting suspiciously, if anyone shady was nearby recently, stuff like that. They look at things like, is there some activity left half done that wouldn’t normally be there? Like food that is in the oven or left on a counter uneaten. Things like how blood splattered across the room to tell what kind of violence or weapon were used, examining the body and position to tell if it was an accident or murder, or where they were stabbed is used to determine how tall the person might have been in relation because of where they were stabbed and the angle it went in. Also stuff like if there was any hairs that shouldn’t be there at the crime scene because that can narrow things down too. Things like that.”