Chapter 7

Laurel wore her Halloween costume to class on Friday: her little black dress, with a witch’s hat, broom, and a plushy toy raven. She wouldn’t normally have worn something so sexy in public, but with no party to go to she wasn’t sure she would get another chance to dress up. And with the sorority out of her life, she had no friends and no prospect for meeting nice guys. She figured she had to do something to get attention.

The preppy blond girl with the sharp bend in her eyebrows - the only other magician on campus as far as Laurel knew - laughed insultingly when Laurel walked by in her witch costume. Laurel had tried to befriend her at the beginning of the year. She had noticed the girl wearing a glamour enchantment, like her, to make her more attractive.

“I can help you with your glamour if you want,” Laurel had said by way of introduction.

The blond girl scoffed. “Why would I want your help?” She said. “Your glamour is so weak it might as well not exist.”

“Well, but ... they’re supposed to be subtle,” Laurel explained.

“Pff. Says the girl who can’t get it up,” the blond girl replied. “Come back and lecture me in thirty years when you’ve learned some actual magic.”

Laurel was pretty sure that the blond girl was wrong. Laurel’s demon magic teacher Alison had taught her not just how to cast glamours, but how to use them to maximum effect. But she wasn’t so sure that she dared contradict a potential new friend, so she left. The two hadn’t spoken since then.

Laurel went to see her math teacher in his office after her exam.

“The test today - it was too long,” Laurel explained after the usual pleasantries. “I couldn’t finish.”

“You had the same amount of time as everyone else in the class,” her teacher replied.

“Yeah, but I knew how to solve all of those problems,” she persisted. “I could have gotten 100% if I’d had a little more time.”

“That’s all figured into the curve,” her teacher explained. “I’ll check the distribution when I grade the papers, but if it’s a bell shape, then it was a good test.”

“But that’s not fair!” Laurel argued. “People who don’t understand it as well as I do will get better grades than me!”

“I’m sorry, but if you actually understood the material fully, you’d be able to solve the problems in time,” he told her.

“I can do it! I really can!” She persisted. “It just sometimes takes me a while to separate the math from ... other things I’ve studied.” This was, sadly, a well-known problem in the world of magic scholarship. Different fields of magic over the centuries had adopted many of the same notations used by mathematics.

“Look, miss, if you have a legitimate learning disability, I’d be happy to work with you through the Learning Assistance Center to make special arrangements. But otherwise, there’s nothing I can do without being unfair to the other students.”

Laurel unconsciously pulled the hem of her dress down. It fit tightly and with all the shrugging she had done throughout the discussion, it had ridden up some. Laurel suddenly became aware of her professor’s eyes on her thighs, having been led there by her tugging.

He broke the silence. “I know that it’s Halloween, but that dress really isn’t appropriate for the classroom.”

Laurel ate dinner at the student union building, hoping that someone would notice her and invite her to a party, or at least just talk to her. Nobody did.

She spent the rest of the evening alone in her dorm room watching videos of animals having sex.