As soon as the fire professor was done with Seth, he booked it out of the tower with me tucked under his arm like a lump of luggage. I had a feeling I knew where he was going.

  He took off at a trot across the campus. It's unbelievable how annoying a trot is when the person doing it is holding you by the ribs and the rest of you was dangling like wet spaghetti. It was annoying enough that I considered getting down rather than be carried.

  Being carried won out. I was nothing if not lazy.

  Despite all the jouncing, I thought about what Arnold said.

  The timing of this revelation annoyed the piss out of me. I wanted a couple of weeks of calm school days, where Seth could get a handle on his guilt about his brother's talent, spin his wheels a bit looking into different professors, trying to find something that vanished years ago. Distractions really, until we had collected more spells and training and were a bit more prepared to take on the shit that was coming our way once we left school grounds.

  But no. Annoying Arnold had to go and tell my wizard he was dying. Fucking Arnold.

  Fucking Benjamin.

  It honestly was a bit wild to me that Benjamin would so casually put Seth at risk like that. My read on the guy had him more concerned for Seth's well being than this would suggest. And it didn't do him any good if Seth kicked it before he found whoever he's looking for.

  That would indicate to me that Seth isn't on a few months' timer.

  Could they have solved this problem? Or was Benjamin using the recorder in the bracelet to check on how Seth was faring magically? It made the most sense to me that Seth was a second gen transfer, and presumed to be safe. The bracelet recorder would be used to confirm that, I was thinking.

  Or Arnold could be lying. He could be trying to force Seth to do something rash. He might even have guessed that Seth had Saben's power, and was trying to scare him.

  That would make sense. If Seth were worried he could die, and knew more about the mysterious artifact that did all this, he would go and get the talent returned or something. That would lead Arnold and Isaac straight to the artifact they were looking for.

  If Arnold was lying.

  Was I willing to gamble on that scenario? Or on Benjamin giving a shit about Seth's life? The ante was Seth's life.

  This was not the kind of thing a kitty could afford to be wrong about. I wanted to keep my pet wizard.

  Wait a second. Arnold said that it was soul damage that killed that other guy. My soul was attached to Seth's. What would happen to me if something did happen to Seth?

  It wouldn't kill me. Tom was fine when his master died. However, I doubted Tom's master died of a mana ruptured soul. Ugh. Details.

  I was a magic beast. Could I even get mana burn? The dodge chickens were magic beasts and they ate those mana berries like they were fucking candy. When Duvessa ate them her talent went haywire. When Seth ate them… Right. I remember that. He was in pretty bad pain and couldn't easily use magic for days and days.

  That right there says too much mana is not only bad for him, it could be deadly. Those berries might have killed him right then if he'd eaten any more. That makes me lean towards Arnold not lying.

  I ate one and only felt a mild increase in mana that honestly didn't last very long. Beyond that, the mana didn't affect me. Through the familiar link, I could feel Seth's pain. At the time I had thought it was no worse than bad cramps or food poisoning.

  So, the main objective would be preventing dangerous levels of mana building up in Seth's soul. How would I even know if it got dangerous? Would it cause pain again? Or would it be like an aneurysm and just pop one day and he's dead?

  If it's pop and he's dead, then there's not much I can do there, so I'm not going to waste energy on that. I can probably do something about soul mana levels though. Kinda like managing blood pressure, but magic.

  At the Menagerie they'd talked a bit about mana getting equalized or some other shit, and something about too powerful a beast being difficult to keep bonds with. Something about magical soul links and passing mana back and forth.

  All I need to do is learn how to tell how much mana is building up, and siphon off the extra. With the magic I don't know how to cast. Ugh. Details again.

  Hold the lettuce, I knew what could siphon mana. As a matter of fact, there was a mana stealing pyramid scheme going on in town. That had to have some sort of spell as a base. If we could learn it, that could give us all the time we need. And by all accounts, we should have several months to sort that out.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Not only that, it fit right in with my nightly activities anyway.

  There was only one other possible scenario I could think of that would make this situation a worse one than I was expecting. One I couldn't do anything about right now, so I didn't plan on addressing. That was if this wasn't a natural effect of the stolen talents, but rather a remote kill switch that Benny Boy could trigger whenever a tool wasn't performing as he'd like.

  If I got the feeling things were going that way, killing Benjamin might be the only way to keep Seth safe. And that might make it so we could never return the talent to Saben. A last resort, but something to keep in my pocket.

  The kid headed straight to where I'd buried his bracelet. Should I let him take it? On one paw, the kid was scared his stolen talent would kill him, and knew the bracelet was a stabilizer. As far as that goes, he was right. If the bracelet could save his life, he should be wearing it.

  On the other paw, I didn't like the idea of Benny Boy knowing every little thing we were up to. For him to put tracking magic on the thing that might keep Seth alive, man, that guy was on another level of diabolical.

  There had to be some type of spell that could block that shit. Seth had been hitting the library whenever he had the opportunity, and I don't remember him mentioning anything that would work. We might need to bite the bullet and just ask someone.

  At this moment, it wouldn't matter though.

  As we got to the pile of spell scrap where I'd buried the bracelet, Seth saw it first and slowed to a stop.

  Someone else had dug up the bracelet.

  I wiggled down and headed over to the empty hole. My whiskers didn't pick up any magic, so I circled the hole to see if there was anything particular about it that could tell me who'd done it.

  "Mau, did you move it?" Poor kid had a catch in his voice.

  Alrighty. This was going to go all kinds of sideways if I didn't get a handle on the kid and get him calmed down. Because kids who are told they've only got a few months to live tend to get a little emotional, and might not make the best decisions.

  Random teenager bad decisions could involve anything from raiding local businesses, Palace heists, or wyvern fights. No way I'd think up these crazy schemes on my own.

  I shook my head at Seth and circled the hole again, this time making use of my amazing cat senses. Yeah, I sniffed the dirt.

  I smelled piss. I knew who'd taken it.

  Getting it back from Grandpa Packrat might be a task and a half. And no matter what, it surely was encased in the packrat's special form of preservative. Gross.

  I signed to Seth who the thief was.

  "A small magic beast took it. You know the beast? Yes. Do you think you can get it back? Maybe." Seth took a deep breath. "I don't like maybes, Mau. If the talent is going to kill me…"

  Okay. Let's reassure the kid. 'Not kill you. Me. Connect. You. Balance." Our sign language was so limited. It was better than nothing, but still sucked.

  Good thing Seth was a sharp apple. "You think the familiar connection will keep us balanced. I'm not in danger because our souls are linked and you have a large mana capacity." Seth nodded to himself. "Selendrith noticed that. She thought I was able to cast so many spells because of our connection. And you would notice if something was wrong, right?"

  I nodded enthusiastically. White lie? Only a little. I was optimistic I would notice, but couldn't be 100% sure.

  "All right. If you think you can get the bracelet back, I think I can wait a bit for it. There is something else doing that suppressing effect on the talent too, so it might be fine."

  I did wonder what that other thing was.

  Seth scooped me up and we headed back to the dorms. "I have homework to get done," Seth explained. "You can look for the bracelet later. I want you nearby for now."

  And there I was, relegated back to security blanket.

  When Seth got back to the room, Isaac was already there and sitting at the desk.

  "Oh, sorry," Seth said. "I thought it was my turn with the desk in here." He dropped his bag next to his trunk and plunked me on the bed. "I suppose I can head back to the library again."

  "No, it is your turn," Isaac said with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. There was a smug hardness there that I didn't like. "Here, all yours. There's extra paper here too. I don't need it, so you can use whatever's here."

  Isaac gathered his books from the desk and stowed them. "I hear everything worked out earlier? You just have to stay out of trouble and you're free and clear at the end of the semester?"

  "Yeah. Same for Arnold," Seth answered.

  Isaac's smile widened. "Of course. Good luck with that."

  Seth watched Isaac skeptically, but thanked him for the supplies. I did not like how smug the bastard was. It felt like a trick.

  Isaac nodded at Seth and left.

  I realized I was growling.

  Seth collapsed on the desk chair. "What do you think Mau? Should I do the diagrams for Ritual Geometry, or the spell analysis for Structured Magic first?"

  He didn't do either of those. He wrote a list of all the professors he knew the names of. There were a lot of names.

  Seth stared at the list. "I don't know if this is all of the professors. It definitely does not include assistants and staff. It'll take me a year or more to investigate each person. Well, I can cross off Professor Isolde of Ritual Geometry. She's in her twenties, I think, and too young." Seth drew a line through her name. "We can probably cross off Professor Armand from the Wind Tower. I heard he only arrived in Rosia a few years ago. He would have still been down by the coast when the murder happened."

  Think it through, kid. You don't have enough info for this task.

  Seth stared at the list. "I don't know where my mom was when she died. I don't know who was with her or what she was doing."

  Righto. I'm sorry kid.

  Seth tapped the list. "Most of them are old enough, so there are only a few I can eliminate that way. You know what? It's fine. If Benjamin thinks my mom's killer will contact me, then I only need to worry about the people that have contacted me. And I don't need to chase this. If Benjamin is right, they will turn up on their own." Seth put a line through Armand, and a little star next to Rebecca of the Fire Tower. "It wouldn't hurt to pay attention though to the people I have had contact with."

  He looked at the list a little longer, and then put it away.

  Hours later, after he finished his work, after dinner (fish!), after Isaac returned, and after both Seth and Isaac had gone to sleep for the night, I got up and stretched.

  Once again I was heading out to search the school. I'd been looking for the wardrobe that would connect the school to the familiar fighting ring, and now I had something else to look for.

  A dirty rat.