What Comes Around Ch 22 bit – Token Evil Teammate

“Ladies, gentlemen, students!”

I want to kill him, Callimachus thought darkly, eyeing Simon’s back as they all stood before the auditorium of assembled teenagers. Well… maim at least. I doubt I’d have much luck with “kill”. Not with his warriors around him. 

Although Ja’far had a slightly pinched look around his eyes Callimachus was coming to recognize as the Life magician’s own “must maim later”. Why was he not surprised?

“I hope your Labor Day weekend was as much fun as ours,” Simon went on. “No, don’t wake those three up, they’ve earned the nap. Especially not you, Dash. If you’re lucky you’d only wake up Aladdin and get plastered to the ceiling. If you’re not you’d half wake up Alan and that would be fatal. At least to your uniform-”

Ja’far poked him.

“As I was saying,” Simon sailed gallantly on, “last weekend was… busy. Interesting, but busy. You may have noticed the tower is currently missing. We’re going to work on that, because now that we’ve figured out the time distortion possible inside there is no way I could survive a concerted attack by our local geeks and magicians determined to fight for extra study time.”

Over in the shadows of the stage, Callimachus saw Yunan clap a hand to his face in disbelief.

Why? The chance to study time distortion… I wonder how it affects the moments of astrology? If the stars here are what matter, that shouldn’t change them, but if stars there make a difference – dear god, what if that’s one of the reasons behind errors in natal charts? If you have to account for rising stars that aren’t visible from Earth….

“I honestly haven’t come up with a summary yet of everything you probably want to know about what happened,” Simon said bluntly. “Let’s just say, if you think you see us putting up certain… defenses… around Hancock, you’re right. Some of my people managed to run into some very unpleasant individuals from an even more unpleasant family, and if they’re not smart enough to take our warning to back off, your teachers are taking measures to be sure they will not be disrupting class time. One way or another. And speaking of unpleasantness….” He waved at the alchemist.

Gritting his teeth, Callimachus inclined his head to the assembled youngsters.

“Stay calm, Magister,” Phaenomena murmured at him from the stage wings. “They can smell fear.”

Hah. As if I’d be afraid of high school students.

Then again, these were Cavins’ students.

“Everyone, this is Mr. Carl Marks,” Simon announced, drawing on one of Callimachus’ more well-grounded identities. “As far as the Department of Education is concerned, he’ll be teaching physics, astronomy, and a few other interesting subjects. As far as you’re concerned – he is assigned to be menacing!”

What.

“You might consider him our newly-hired Snape,” Simon went on.

I’m going to kill him.