And practical Aadhya had just shrugged at me and said, “El, I’m not a crazy person, so I’m not going to spend the rest of my life doing this. But I’m ready to spend some of my life doing this, because it’s worth doing, and right now is when you’re going to need the most help figuring out how to get it done. Anyway, if someone’s going to try to get at you through me and Liu, they’ll do it whether we’re with you or not. That was the price of admission when we put our names up on the wall. However,” she added pointedly, “I’m stipulating right now, no more youth hostels. That place smelled like the boys’ bathroom back at school. You can sleep on the floor in my hotel room if you need to demonstrate your asceticism.”
Liesel only sniffed when I tried it on her, too. “If you try to do this all alone, you will certainly expose yourself within three months, and then all of us will be targets at once,” she said. “If we aren’t prepared to sever ties with you completely, we are much better off helping you while we strengthen our own positions,” meaning she wasn’t prepared to do that, even though it was obviously the most sensible option.
“Watch out, Mueller, I’m going to start thinking you like me,” I said.
“You already know I like you,” she said brusquely. I heaved a deep beleaguered sigh and hugged her. “Thanks,” I said. “I like you too.”
“Yes, yes, don’t be mawkish,” Liesel said, but she gave me a hug back.
I’d told Deepthi I’d find a way to be content, and I would. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to go in for a career of hunting maw-mouths, but it was work worth doing. A good life’s work. And a few days from now, I’d go and start on it, with my allies and my friends helping.
And Orion would start on his own good life’s work, here in the Scholomance, guarding the gates. He’d keep the doors clear, and the agglos out of the cleansing machinery, and blithely slaughter all the mals that came to feed on the children, and the mana would flow through him to keep the Scholomance up, keep it running. A shelter that would now in fact protect all the wise-gifted children of the world.
Orion picked off the last of the edamame and stretched long and lanky and sprawled back over the steps. He’d traded in his crisp clean tailored clothes for an outfit that he might’ve been wearing anytime in the last four years of our lives: cargo shorts and a Queen T-shirt that had been new three days ago and now was already faintly aromatic and had acquired three small burn holes near the hem from some poor hapless mal.
“When the kids go home for the summer, I’ll come out and help you hunt,” he said. “It’ll be fun.”
Spoken exactly like the solid block of wood who’d once told me the Scholomance was the best place in the entire world; it was like he hadn’t learned a thing. “It will not be fun,” I said peevishly. “Hunting maw-mouths isn’t fun.”
“It’ll be great,” he said, grinning up at me, refusing to yield. “We’ll go all over the world—”
“—to find the most horrible monsters and kill them?” I snapped. “Yes, a delightful holiday; lying on a beach, a trip to Paris, they really can’t compete—”
His smile was only widening as I went on, a shining in his face like golden light as he looked at me, the wanker, and I tried to keep going but I couldn’t help it; I leaned over and took his face in my hands and kissed him, again and again, there in the Scholomance gym, with the birds going in swoops and the tiny butterflies poking among the wildflowers, and the school sent a soft cool fragrant breeze in our faces, full of the scent of wildflowers and peaches.
It was, actually, a bit nice.