“If that mage was capable of anything worth ‘bank,’ he wouldn’t have been living on frozen burritos in a basement apartment,” my AI pointed out.
I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I just don’t want you getting your hopes too high,” Sibyl said. “As a social support AI, it’s my job to assist in your mental health, and these fits of wild optimism that crumble into crushing despair when they run into reality are not good for you. I think it would be much healthier for you to drop the notes in Heidi’s box and go home for a shower before the evening auction. I don’t have a nose, but I’m pretty sure you smell like dead guy.”
That was undoubtedly true, but the thought of abandoning the notes—my only score from today’s disgusting, backbreaking work—in a cubby at the history department’s unorganized office was too much to bear. “Not a chance,” I said firmly. “We’re going inside. If these notes are worth something, I want to know today.”
“Suit yourself,” Sibyl said. “I’m just saying there’s a strong likelihood this whole thing is a waste of time.”
“Better to waste time than money,” I said stubbornly. “Time I’ve got.” Until Friday, at least.
We spent the rest of the ride in silence. Thankfully, the traffic disruption from the moving highway was mostly confined to the northern half of downtown. Midtown, where the IMA campus was, was moving just fine. Once we got out of the glut, we made good time, cruising down the cheap toll lanes until we reached the turnoff for the institute just as the ride meter ticked to thirty-nine minutes, exactly as predicted.
“Haven’t been here in a while,” I said, self-consciously brushing the grime off my warded poncho as I stepped onto the pristine white cement of IMA’s new visitor pavilion. “I like the new duck pond.”
“I think it’s supposed to be a reflecting pool,” Sibyl said. “The ducks are just swimming in it.”
“Then I hope they’re ready to sell their souls to pay tuition,” I joked, looking around at the perfect green lawn and artistically scattered white buildings that made up IMA’s main campus. “You go into debt just for breathing around here.”
Like everything else that was worth real money, IMA was up on the Skyways. It had a nice location, too, taking up several elevated blocks just half a mile south of the Dragon Consulate where the Peacemaker, the dragon who claimed the DFZ as his territory, kept his lair. I wasn’t sure why the DFZ allowed any dragon, particularly one as famously eccentric as the Peacemaker, to claim her as his land, but there must have been some kind of history there, because she loved him. Her buildings were forever shifting around the multilevel Dragon Consulate to make sure the dragons had a clear flight path coming in.
And they were always coming in. Thanks to the Peacemaker’s Edict, which declared that no dragon could attack another within the city without facing the Peacemaker’s wrath, the DFZ had turned into a sort of dragon Switzerland. Clans that would kill each other on sight anywhere else in the world routinely met in the DFZ to talk. Not about peace—normal dragons never talked peace—but they talked a lot of business, which was probably why the DFZ gave them so much leeway. No one loved capitalism more than she did, and when you considered how much wealth the average dragon accumulated over their immortal life, courting them was just good sense.
It was also good for IMA. Being so close to the Dragon Consulate, and the spectacle of the giant dragons that constantly flew through the sky surrounding it, gave the school an edge that other magical arts universities simply could not top. Add in the fact that they’d converted their entire Skyway campus into a lavish park complete with water features, semi-tropical gardens, and buildings that looked like modern art installations, and the whole place just reeked of exclusivity and money.
Of the three major magical colleges in the DFZ, the Institute for Magical Arts was the most expensive by an order of magnitude. While MIT-Thaumaturgical and the New Wayne College of Magic had to pour their efforts into industrial spellwork research to court corporate funding, IMA dedicated itself to the “art” part of magical arts with graduate programs in expressive casting, illusionary sculpture, magical theatre, and, my specialty, magical art history. It was the best magic-focused liberal arts school in the world, which meant it was trust fund kids all the way down. I’d fit right in when I’d first arrived almost four years ago. Now I felt like a homeless bum who’d wondered onto campus by accident.
At least I could still look like I knew where I was going. The campus had changed a lot since I’d finished my master’s degree a year and a half ago, but the path to the art history department was still drilled into my memory. Once I figured out how to get out of the fancy new visitor’s area, I walked straight there, ordering my truck to circle the block a few times so I wouldn’t have to pay for parking while I cut across the bright-green grass lawn toward the perfect white cube that was IMA’s historical arts building.
As a lowly doctoral student, Heidi’s office was in the basement. It was a very nice basement with reactive lighting and fake LED windows displaying real-time footage of famous landscapes, but it was still a bunch of closet-sized offices crammed into an underground hallway. I didn’t remember which one was Heidi’s anymore—it had been more than a year—but I didn’t need to. Her door was still covered in the same history jokes and pictures of her and her golden retriever as I remembered. It opened the moment I knocked, revealing a startlingly tall blond woman with tanned skin, a healthy, athletic glow, and cheekbones that could cut glass.
“Opal!” Heidi cried, rushing forward to hug me before I could warn her about my wards. “Ugh,” she said a moment later, snatching her arms back. “What are you wearing? It feels like a trash bag.”
“Anti-dirt wards,” I explained, pointing at my poncho. “And anti a lot of other stuff, which is why it feels so slippery. That and the fact that it is actually made of plastic.”
Heidi looked horrified. “Why are you wearing that horrible thing?” she asked, stepping back to let me inside. “You’re not still working as a Cleaner, are you?”
I shrugged and took a seat on the minimalist metal stool in front of her neatly organized desk. “It’s not so bad.”
“Really?” she asked, shutting the door behind me. “Because you look terrible.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thanks.”
“I’m serious,” Heidi snapped, walking back to her desk. “You’re thin, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.”
“It’s been a rough few months,” I admitted, reaching into my bag. “But I’m working on turning it around. That’s why I’m here, actually. I need a favor. I found these on a job, and—”
“Stop,” Heidi said angrily. “Just stop right there. What do you think you’re doing?”
I blinked at her. “Asking for help?”
“Help?” she said, her perfect face growing furious. “Opal, you vanished! You got your degree, and then you disappeared!”
“I didn’t disappear,” I said defensively. “I was still here in the DFZ. I just needed a change of—”