on her. When Plum did a magic trick, everybody noticed.
“Let’s put it to a vote,” she said solemnly. “All those in favor of pranking Wharton, say aye.”
The ayes came back in a range of tones from righteous zeal to ironic detachment to sleepy acquiescence. This business of clandestine after-hours scheming could certainly take a whack at your sleep schedule, Plum had to admit. It was a little unfair on the others, because Plum was a quick study who went through homework like a hot knife through butter, and she knew it wasn’t that easy for all of them. From her vantage point on the floor, with her eyes closed, her long brown hair splayed out in a fan on the carpet, which had once been soft and woolly but which had been trodden down into a shiny, hard-packed grey, the vote sounded more or less unanimous.
Anyway, there was fairly evidently a plurality in the room. She dispensed with a show of nays.
“It’s maddening,” Emma said in the silence that followed, by way of spiking the football. “Absolutely maddening.”
That was an exaggeration, but the room let it go. It’s not like Wharton’s crime was a matter of life and death. But a stop would be put to it. This the League swore.
Darcy sat on the couch opposite the long mirror with the scarred white frame that leaned against one wall. She toyed with her reflection—with both of her long, elegant hands she was working a spell that stretched it and then squished it, stretched, then squished. The technicalities were beyond Plum, but then, mirror-magic was Darcy’s specialty. It was a bit show-offy of her, but you couldn’t blame her. Darcy didn’t have a lot of opportunities to use it.
The facts of the Wharton case were as follows. At Brakebills, most serving duties at dinner were carried out by First Years, who then ate separately afterwards. But, by tradition, one favored Fourth Year was chosen every year to serve as wine steward, in charge of pairings and pourings and whatnot. Wharton had had this honor bestowed upon him, and not for no reason. He did know a lot about wine, or at any rate he seemed to be able to remember the names of a whole lot of different regions and appellations and whatever else. (In fact, another Fourth Year with the unintentionally hilarious name of Claire Bear had been tipped for wine steward this year. Wharton showed her up, coolly and publicly, by distinguishing between a Gigondas and a Vacqueyras in a blind tasting.)
But in the judgment of the League, Wharton had sinned against the honor of his office, sinned most grievously, by systematically short-pouring the wine, especially for the Fifth Years, who were allowed two glasses with dinner. Seriously, these were like three-quarter pours. Everybody agreed. For such a crime, there could be no forgiveness.
“What do you suppose he does with it all?” Emma said.
“Does with what?”
“The extra wine. He must be saving it. I bet he ends up with an extra bottle every night.”
There were eight girls in the League, of whom six were present, and Emma was the youngest and the only Second Year, but she wasn’t cowed by her elders. In fact, she was, in Plum’s opinion, even a bit too keen on the League and her role in same. She could have made just a little show of being intimidated once in a while. Plum was just saying.
“I dunno,” Plum said. “I guess he drinks it.”
“He couldn’t get through a bottle a night,” Darcy said. She had a big poofy 1970s Afro; it even had an Afro pick sticking out of it.
“He and his boyfriend, then. What’s his name. It’s Greek.”
“Epifanio.” Darcy and Chelsea said it together.
Chelsea lay on the couch at the opposite end from Darcy, her honey-blond head on the armrest, knees drawn up, lazily trying to mess up Darcy’s mirror tricks. Darcy’s spells were marvels of intricacy and precision, but it was much easier to screw up somebody else’s spell than it was to cast one yourself. That was one of the many small unfairnesses of magic.
Darcy frowned and concentrated harder, pushing back. The interference caused an audible buzz, and, under the stress, Darcy’s reflection in the mirror twisted and spiraled in on itself in weird ways.
“Stop,” she said. “You’re going to break it.”
“He’s probably got some set spell running that eats it up,” Emma said. “Has to feed it wine once a day. Like a virility thing.”
“Of course that’s where your mind would go,” Plum said.
“Well,” Emma said, flushing mauve—gotcha!—“you know. He’s so buff.”
Chelsea saw her moment and caused Darcy’s reflection to collapse in on itself, creepily, like it had gotten sucked into a black hole, and then vanish altogether. In the mirror it looked like she wasn’t even there—her end of the couch was empty, though the cushion was slightly depressed.
“Ha,” said Chelsea.
“Buff does not mean virile.”
That was Lucy, an intensely earnest, philosophical Fifth Year; her tone betrayed a touch of what might have been the bitterness of personal experience. Plump and wan and Korean, Lucy floated cross-legged in one of the room’s irregular upper corners. Her dark straight hair was loose and so long that it hung down past her bum.
“I bet he gives it to the ghost,” Lucy went on.
“There is no ghost,” Darcy said.
Somebody was always saying that Brakebills had a ghost. It was like Plum saying there was a League: you could never prove it either way.
“Come to that,” said Chelsea, who had consolidated her victory over Darcy in the mirror game by plopping her feet in Darcy’s lap, “what does ‘virile’ mean?”
“Means he’s got spunk in his junk,” Darcy said.
“Girls, please,” Plum said, by way of getting things back on track. “Neither Wharton’s spunk nor his junk are germane here. The question is, what to do about the missing wine? Who’s got a plan?”
“You’ve got a plan,” Darcy and Chelsea said at the same time, again. The two of them were like stage twins.
“I do have plan.”
“Plum has a plan,” intoned tiny, cheery Holly from the one good armchair.
Plum always had a plan; she couldn’t help it. Her brain seemed to secrete them naturally. Plum’s plan was to take advantage of what she perceived to be Wharton’s Achilles’ heel, which was his pencils. He didn’t use the school-issued ones, which as far as Plum was concerned were entirely functional and sufficient unto the day: deep Brakebills blue in color, with “Brakebills” in gold letters down the side. But Wharton didn’t like them—he said they were too fat, he didn’t like their “hand-feel,” and the lead was soft and mushy. Wharton brought his own from home instead.
In truth, Wharton’s pencils were remarkable pencils: olive green in color and made from some oily, aromatic wood that released a waxy aroma reminiscent of distant exotic rain forest trees. God knows where he got them from. The erasers were bound in rings of a dull grey brushed steel that looked too industrial and high-carbon for the task of merely containing the erasers, which were, instead of the usual fleshy pink, a light-devouring black. Wharton kept his pencils in a flat silver case, which also contained (in its own crushed-velvet nest) a sharp little knife that he used to keep them sharpened to wicked points.
Moreover, whatever life Wharton had led before becoming a magician-in-training at Brakebills, it must have included academic decathlon or debating or something, because he had a whole arsenal of spinning-pencil tricks of the kind that people commonly used to intimidate rival mathletes. He performed them constantly and unconsciously and seemingly involuntarily. It was annoying, even over and above the wine thing.
Plum planned to steal the pencils and hold them for ransom, the ransom being an explanation of what the hell Wharton did with all that wine, along with a pledge to stop doing