He had noticed this one only recently, mainly because instead of bothering with all the makeup and such that ordinary girls did, she had thrown up a complicated illusion. It had caught his attention and made him wonder, so of course he'd asked to see her after class.

If the illusion was a sign of what else she could do, she could be very useful to him. It had been a very complicated illusion.

The first thing that anyone coming into his office might have noticed was that one wall of books was much older than usual. (Or rather, than it usually appeared.) The illusions on that shelf had been dropped for this session.

After all, April was going to be a student of magic, not only English.

And maybe she would be powerful enough to be more than a student. Even if that meant that she would not have as long to enjoy her abilities...

He leaned back in his chair, and waited.

April had taken special care with her appearance for this meeting. First, she cleaned herself up and did her nails. (A little spell to make them grow, yada yada, a trim, a polish....) Then she put on one of her better sweaters, a minty green number, with a pair of neat jeans (as opposed to old ratty jeans). It was winter. She wasn't stupid. She also wore lip gloss, fancy boots and hair clips.

Her sister had always hounded her into at least having something nice to wear. It was nice to see that was paying off.

Add to that a touch of illusion here, a tad of sparkly... something... there, and April looked two things: fresh and chipper.

Oh, and warm. She was also warm.

Well, this was the right floor, and there was the door... so now it was just a matter of knocking. Yep. Knocking. Right now.

Still haven't knocked.

A bit nervous.

Still, she could do this. Worst came to worst, she could just pretend to be ditsy. Or if this meeting was less than wholesome (increadily handsome or not...) she could always just... leave.

...mmmmm, unwholesome.

Bad thoughts, April, bad thoughts. Squelch the bad thoughts about the (probably taken) english prof.

...or don't. Mmm, not squelching the bad thoughts....

Ack.

Squelching!

Okay. Under control.

She knocked on the door.

"Is that you, Miss Terence? Please, come in."

It's probably a good thing that Alexander is not a mind reader, because he's really not the kind of man who would find the 'bad thoughts' flattering. Rather, he would find them a bit strange, a bit annoying, and a bit amusing.

And then he would humiliate her for having them. Subtly. Or not so subtly, depending on his mood.

He was ready to throw up the illusion on the books again at a moment's notice if it turned out to be another student. Of course, this being the time that he'd specified, it was a good guess that it was April Terence.

Okay, wow. How cool is that? Miss Terence. That's got style. That's got class.

And, wow, those are cool looking books.

Okay, so she has a bad habit of not answering him before entering. She answers as she enters instead, with a chipper "Yessir."

Pause, as she stands there, hands behind her back, looking around completely unashamedly. Well. Mostly unashamedly.

At least she's subtle about it.

Now, where should I sit down... just the one chair... desk? No, that had rude written all over it....

Hey, not literally, shut up.

That also means that he likes her. Or at least, is interested in cultivating her, which comes to almost the same thing, with Alexander Barclay.

"Please, sit down, Miss Terence." His smile is wide and white (and slightly fake, but who needs to know that), his dark eyes friendlier than ever they would be in one of his usual classes, and his hand waves grandly to the computer chair.

Obviously, he doesn't mind students sitting there.

"I'll come right to the point. That was a very impressive illusion, the other morning. I wondered if it was the sort that uses a deal of power or the sort that requires little power but complicated preparation?"

In other words, 'Nice magic.'

Flatterer.

She took a seat, with a glance tossed his way that said 'why am I here?' Thankfully, she didn't have to wait long for an answer. And what an answer.

...ooooookay. Not what I expected. At all.

...that explains the books, I guess.

Okay. Keep it cool. This is a chance to impress him. Don't mess this up, April.

"Um... probably a lot of power and little preparation? I mean, I just did it. I didn't fiddle with stuff like... newts or anything...." Initiate she was, but pay any attention to the outside world she did not.

April is an eensie bit self-absorbed.

She also isn't normally this nervous. Blame it on this being a new type of situation that she really wants to ace.

"Is illusion all you can do, or are there other things you've mastered?" It's not exactly a pop quiz on magic, but it's pretty darn close. Frankly, he's feeling her out, to see if she's worth spending the time to cultivate and win over and eventually use, or if she's simply a talented, but mediocre, mage.

He's hoping for the former, of course.

And she's probably noticed by now that the books aren't exactly your usual English classics--the ones that have titles on the spines are barely legible, and most of them look very, very old.

A few look modern, and their titles are... strange.

Ooou, excuse to brag. "I can do anything." Pause, thinking it over. "I mean, so far I haven't come across anything that's been more than a bit... iunno... challenging?" That had been a bit of transmogrification.

Turtle into cat back when she was ten, if you're curious. Her mum had said she couldn't get a cat, had gotten a turtle instead... long story.

Snapper is a very strange cat. He lives in her dorm.

All this during another thoughtful pause, as she shifts, uncomfortable. She definitely hadn't expected this from the english professor she had a bit of a crush on.

"I haven't really found many spells to try." She's trying (unsuccessfully) to keep her eyes away from that shelf of books.

...she could only imagine what it'd be like to have access to real spells, and not just rely on sheer willpower to push a spell through the laws of space and time.

"Grimoires are hard to find without a special supplier," he agrees, and, following her gaze to the books, smiled wider. If that was possible. "Yes, those are spell books. I like to keep them on hand, and I spend more time here than at home, unfortunately."

There are a few spell books that he keeps in a magically locked, as well as conventionally locked, safe in his bedroom, but those are the ones involving the ways and means of possibly capturing a god. Of course he wouldn't let a student near those.

"Would you like to have a look?"

Imagine a fly fisher, tossing the bait out there. Now he's waiting for a bite on the line, ready to jerk her into his grasp.

He's kidding. He has to be kidding. No way is Mr. Stern Guy going to let me anywhere near his books.

But, oh, so tempting....

Long pause. She's pretending not to be interested. Or pretending to think about it. Or something.

"...could I?" Little mouse-girl won't hurt your books, mister. Let little mouse-girl touch the pretty books. Let her read them. Let her commit them to memory.

Ack, expecting too much again. Control yourself, April, you're going to look like an idiot.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a scornful part of herself said too late.

"I offered, didn't I?" He stood up and turned, making a show over looking along the shelves and choosing one specially for her, after which, he turned around and held out one of the slightly more modern books to her. (More modern being that it looked as if it had been published in the 1800s instead of handwritten in the Middle Ages.)

"This one works well for someone who doesn't know many actual spells." He smiled. "Though, if you were able to manage things as complicated as that illusion without access to formal spells, I imagine you have a lot of raw power available, Miss Terence."

More flattery, but it's also true. Power and will can do a lot, even without exact guiding boundaries.

He's definitely interested in her now.

And she's definitely flattered now. She colors a bit, grins a bit, and then completely forgets he exists as she opens the book with reverent fingers and begins flipping through. She can't expect to absorb everything now, but she can certainly skim it.

"Are they all like this one?" Glancing up at him.

...wow.

Pause.

My GOD. Dr. Barclay is so. COOL.

He should really smile more often. It makes him look so... so... I don't know. It's nice.

"Most of them are more complicated, and definitely more difficult to read, since they're often handwritten. Badly handwritten. I use that one as something of a beginning textbook when I'm teaching magic. It was written with beginning mages in mind, I believe."

He has a few textbooks that he himself has written, actually. But then, those he doesn't pull out until later courses. If you can call the rather informal sort of thing that he teaches a course, anyway.

"You may borrow it, if you like. Feel free to come to me if you have any sort of questions."

She nodded, bemused, and a bit shellshocked.

It isn't every day your english teacher goes UBERmage on you.

And that sounded like a dismissal, but April isn't the kind to be dismissed. "...so is teaching magic a sideline, or are you just pretending to be an english teacher?"

Don't blame her, she's read too many books.

The more important question, of course, is why he noticed / singled her out. But she isn't quite up to asking that just yet. April doesn't really act like herself around Dr. Barclay, for some strange, inexplicable reason. I don't know why. She doesn't know why.

...if you know what's good for you, you don't know why either. Rar.

Alexander actually chuckled. "Neither, actually. You might say that I have a double career, I suppose. I teach and write in both worlds--the royalties make up for my professor's salary."

... yes. Alexander Barclay just made a joke. Fall down in shock, at the supreme unusualness.

Actually, it isn't all that unusual. He tends to be more friendly and approachable on a one-on-one basis with either good English students or promising magical students. Though he's never quite as open with them as he has been with Keye, but that's a special case.

Everything about Keye is a special case.

But that's another subject.

April smiled distractedly at the joke, trying to pretend that she wasn't tempted to completely ignore (the love of her life) her teacher in favor of a book, of all things.

It'd be rude to ask how long he'd been doing it. Something else to say... couldn't appear tongue-tied.... Ah. Pull attention away from book. Open mouth. Say stuff.

"How do you find the time? One teaching career is more than enough for most people." April had seriously considered becoming a teacher herself. (More than a bit for an opportunity to test out whether she could turn children into frogs, but still.) Now that she thought of it, this was an opportunity to learn about the prospect of teaching magic and something else herself.

Besides it being a chance to talk to Dr. Barclay, of course.

"No other commitments, I suppose. I'm not married, I have no children..." He shrugged. "What else am I going to do with my time?" Besides plot to capture a deity, that is.

Alexander has very little in the way of a social life, and most of that is obligatory and comes with being a professor and having lots of colleagues with whom he is expected to be friendly.

There are actually a couple he considers almost friends, but no one he's close to. He's not close to anybody.

(Reggie might be the closest to an actual friend that he has, or maybe was the closest. He went mad when Azrael ruined his life, doncha know.)

"Besides, I am not most people." Obviously. Most people are sane.

Whoa, no one snatched this guy up yet? Woo!

Older, well off, talented, polite, magical, learned, well-spoken, honorable, single....

Wow.

She nodded, since that really was unanswerable.

Hm... should she leave? Did he have something else to say? Should she continue making conversation?

April isn't great at picking up subtle social cues. It's one reason she has that dream of turning fifth graders into small animals of the roadkill variety.

Now, she could have said something along the lines of 'take up knitting?' And she would have, if he hadn't been who he was. Ah well. She'd save that joke for some other teacher down the line.

Ookay, student went silent. Is this a good thing or a bad thing, and why is she looking at him like that... Oh, she's one of those. Well, he's dealt with them before--male and female, in more recent years, which was rather strange--so...

Anyway, he wants her to trust him. Who knows, maybe she'll even be one of the ones who willingly offers to let him use her power. It's easier to take when they're willing, you know...

"What do you think of the book, Miss Terence? Understanding it all right?"

She almost started guiltily.

She might be passionately in love with him admire him, but that didn't mean she wanted him to notice. She wasn't stupid. Teachers = admire. Teachers no = stalk and pounce and... uh... stuff.

Yes, stuff. Anyway.

She nodded happily. "Loving it so far." Chipper, ain't she?

Pause.

"Thank you." Funny thing, that isn't joking. She cannot thank him enough in a million years for this book. Even if she doesn't learn much from it, now she knows things like it exist.

That's a gift she'll be a long time repaying.

(Or not, but that's something the author will keep under her hat, eh?)

"You're quite welcome." He smiled, a toothy white smile that belonged on a toothpaste commercial, or maybe in a dentist's office. 'Try the new whitening formula today!' sort of smile.

There was a hint of something other than friendly interest and teacherly indulgence in that smile, though. It's not something that's easily definable, but it's there. Perhaps a sort of acquisitive greed. Perhaps a sort of cold pleasure, that she's responding so well to the bait he's giving her...

Whatever it is, it's very subtle and probably nothing that anyone would notice, unless they were looking for it.

"Perhaps you should come to my 'study group'--" he makes the words a bit of a joke between they two, pulling the wool over the eyes of the uninitiated world "--on Saturdays at eight. I explain things in a bit more detail than the book does."

At this point, she wouldn't have minded some greed.

It would have made her feel wanted, if she'd noticed.

April had this thing where feeling unwanted drove her up walls. It's a reason for being so chipper all the time, y'know, the need to always be the kind of person people wanted to be around.

She did not, however, notice.

Well, besides that he had a nice smile.

(Please note that at this time she's glancing between him and the book in a sortof rapid fire keep-track-of-both-for-fear-they'll-disappear way.)

"How many students would be there?" She said quietly, mentally rearranging her schedule. Were any of them better than her? Because if they were, she'd have some cramming to do.

April had somewhat of a superiority complex, and she liked it that way. She'd be better than everyone.

Well, except Dr. Barclay. Couldn't dream of surpassing him (it was one reason she admired him so much).

Of course, let him think she was shy or something, if he wanted.

"Not many--it's a rather informal class, so the number of students varies. Eight or so, usually. I add and lose students as I discover them or as they grow past the level of that class. After that, it's usually private sessions while we work on their own particular strengths and weaknesses."

This is often the part where the student jumps at him. (Metaphorically speaking, of course. With the fly fisher metaphor, imagine the fish jumping out of the pond, right into the fisherman's lap.) For some reason, the students that he singles out always seem to admire him...

Maybe that's because he's so nice in these personal sessions... Maybe it's because he's (mildly) famous.

Whatever reason, it's convenient.

She opened her mouth to say something brash, hesitated, and closed it again, expression going... sly. Quite sly. In that grade-school teacher's-pet kind of way some kids have of being sly.

Private tutoring sessions. Oh yes.

Now, April isn't the kind of girl to keep these things from her expression, but she is the kind of girl to not say them out loud when they pop into her head. Alex is perceptive. Let him guess.

"It sounds nice."

And the understatement of the year award goes to: (Dun dun dun!)

Well, guess.

"Well, I would hope that they're more than nice. I would hope that my students actually come out of them having learned something." Okay, end mini lecture. Alexander doesn't want to chase her off, of course. It's easier when they stay right with him...

And somewhere in there, there's guilt that he's adding another name to his list of future dead children, but it's well buried and he only lets it out on rare occasions, when none of his students (and future power sources) can see.

"Look over the book, see if there are things in there that you can already do, and we'll go from there. The study group's in the library, at eight. Ask the librarians--they'll direct you."

It grows tiresome meddling with their emotions, you know. He gets weary of pretending to be friendly and kind...

Okay, eep, worn out welcome.

Time to go.

Jeeze....

"Yessir." Same entry phrase as exit phrase, funnily enough, but in a slightly different tone. Not mocking, no, but with the hints of good humor that never left April.

It took a lot to get to her, emotionally speaking.

And she's leaving now, if that's fine with Dr. Barclay. Taking the book, since that seems to be the idea.

He nodded, waving her on.

"See you in class, Miss Terence. Don't neglect your readings for that book. I won't be any easier on you than any other time, and don't stay up reading it all night, either. I know I did with my first grimoire." Yes, and he'd been a girl at the time, too.

He smiled again.

"Run along; I'm sure you have studying to do."

She threw him a salute, as it just seemed... appropriate.

Funny girl, isn't she?

[Fin]