“They seriously never asked for that back from you?” Luke asked. “Not even after you became a student?”
I snorted. “This isn’t a group that worries too much about the hired help. You’d be amazed at the access the custodial staff has to hidden corners of the academy. It sounds bad, but it’s not, really. Most of the interesting stuff in those corners is magical, and most of the staff are not. So it’s sort of a security system by default that way.”
Luke huffed a skeptical sigh. “So we’d better hope.”
We stepped into the reception room where Thelonius’s administrative assistant held court, but didn’t wait, instead crowding quickly to the big man’s office itself.
We didn’t dare switch on the light, but fortunately, Thelonius’s chamber was equipped with three large windows that let in the ambient light from the outside, bathing the space in a twilit gloom. Cabinets lined the front of the room, and the guys spread out. Instead of a magical attempt at discovery, they opted to rifle through drawers. Marcus and I were fairly handy lock pickers, but to be fair, the cabinet drawers posted only the most standard of locking systems. Again, information falling into the hands of the ignorant did not seem to be a concern of Twyst Academy.
I suspected basic hubris played into this situation as well. Once again, the second thing I needed to know about wizards coming into play. Still, these drawers contained the rosters of the most magical families in the world. Why weren’t they better policed? Or were there wards here so far beyond our skill level, we didn’t even notice them?
A shiver passed through me at the thought. “Um, guys?” I began, but my faint alarm was drowned out by Luke’s surprised grunt. I glanced over to see that he wasn’t standing at one of the cabinets. Instead, he was looking at the painting that hung over Thelonius’s desk.
“Hey, guys. This is the picture you were talking about, right?”
Rafe answered over his shoulder. “Yep. We’ll get there.”
“Well, maybe come now. Because there’s something hinky about it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Connor said, barely glancing up. “I’ve seen that painting a million times. It’s called the Four Mages, or the Toast, but no one knows what it was originally named. Bartholomew Twyst is guy with the Dr. Strange eyebrows, number three from the left. The other three are usually considered to be unnamed founding fathers of Twyst Academy. Their names are lost to history, by their careful design, or so the story goes. There are like a half-dozen versions of that painting around campus.”
“Really?” I frowned, looking up now. “I’ve never seen it.” I peered at the richly layered painting of four men. They weren’t hot, exactly, but they were compelling. I definitely would have noticed them if I’d had to dust the painting.
“Well, you should have,” Connor said. “They have one in the admissions office, the professor’s lounge, the library—”
“No way,” I countered, glancing from the painting to him. He still had his hands buried in a file drawer. “Where?”
“Like, near the front doors, I’m sure,” Connor said vaguely. “But even though Bartholomew was real, some people think this painting wasn’t meant to represent actual people, just, like, the four elemental pillars of magic—earth, air, fire, water.”
“Not earth, stardust,” Marcus corrected, chuckling from across the room, as if this was a grade school lesson from the distant past. “Only wizards know the truth about the makeup of the world and why magic works. And Maddigan’s right—it’s not in the library, it’s in the law library. Come to think of it, it’s only hung in the inner sanctums of Twyst.”
“I’ve never seen it,” Luke said, studying the painting as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I’ve sort of heard of Bartholomew Twyst, but I’ve never seen this picture. But that’s not what I wanted you to check out—”
“This is the most elaborate version of the painting I’ve ever seen,” Marcus admitted, his soft words cutting Luke off again as he took a step closer to the painting. “There’s way more detail in this one. Interesting…”
I grimaced. Interesting was one word for it. The artwork featured four men in elegant suits standing around a table, apparently enjoying a collegial toast. They looked very one-percenter, accomplished, rich, and smug, and probably in their mid-thirties. The man to Bartholomew’s left was also light-skinned and slender, while the one to his right had a pinker cast to his face. He sported a faint beard and was built more robustly. The fourth man had been depicted with a darker complexion, with brown eyes and a wave of rich brown hair. The clothes of the four men had a faintly Victorian feel to match their proper top hats, but with academy people, that didn’t mean much.
The chamber where the men were standing looked like your standard-issue drawing room—except it’d clearly been decorated by a crazy person. A white cockatoo perched on one of the chairs, its head crested in bright yellow spikes, its beak angled high and its wings spread, the snowy plumage gorgeous against the chair’s deep red velvet upholstery. Vivid purple curtains edged in what looked like actual cheetah hide framed two closed doorways. Easily three dozen lamps and lanterns of various sizes and shapes swung from the ceiling, casting bright light on the four men, who held up their proper crystal toasting glasses. I squinted at the pile of books by the bronze-skinned man, blinking as I saw that a rose-quartz key lay on the stack, identical to Luke’s key. What the…
“Yo, what are you all doing?” Connor asked, shoving another drawer closed. “Come on, guys. We’ve got to get through these files. Nothing’s coming up.”
“I know,” Luke said, still staring hard at the painting, rocking back and forth. “But look at this. You shift a little, and it’s like one of those hologram paintings. You have to be looking close, but it changes.”
That drew everyone’s attention. We stepped closer to the painting, lining up beside Luke, then edging to the right and left.
“I don’t see…wait,” Rafe said, his tone sharpening. “They’re wearing robes when they shift. Those are definitely robes.”
I leaned a little farther to the left and saw what he meant. The fashionable, long Victorian-era jackets the men all sported above their trim pants and snow-white shirts gave way to sweeping capes. Their top hats remained on their heads, but somehow looked more rakish with the flowing robes. Around their necks, the men wore medallions strung on strips of cloth, all in royal purple. The medallions looked identical to the gold coins so prevalent in the Mage Trials.
I rocked the other way, far to the right, and the image dissolved, returning to four entitled rich guys. Rock left again, and I was back to sexy magician land.
“Jonathan Marx, Douglas Wharton, Bartholomew Twyst, Magnus Bellum?” Rafe offered, reciting the names from the parchment page. “In some order or another?”
The painting shivered, a glow illuminating its center, and then it wasn’t just the men who’d changed, but the painted chamber behind them as well. The polite furnishings of a Victorian drawing room gave way to gilded walls and archways, with corridors curving away. The table became a marble slab, and the cut crystal glasses in the men’s hands had morphed to goblets—one sparking with fire, the next shooting stars, a third bubbling with a tiny fountain of water, the fourth streaming smoke. In front of Bartholomew sat a second goblet, another of the men held a staff, the third man stood over a gold box, while the fourth didn’t appear to need additional props. Around the men were stacked more piles of thick gold coins. These were magicians, sure, but more than that…