Read Online Magic University Book One: The Siren and the Sword by Cecilia Tan - Free Book Online

before they had sat down. He settled for stealing cherry tomatoes out of Jess’s salad. “So how does it work? I mean, is there a trial or something? And then they, what, wave a wand over you?”
    Alex gave Jess a look, deferring to her. “It only takes one Judge to do it, but usually they get three together before making a decision,” she said. “It’s not like a normal court, though. The whole jury idea becomes useless when they can tell magically whether you are lying or not. It’s not done in public, either. Just the accused, the accuser if there is one, and one to three judges.”
    Kyle shivered. “Do people know who the Judges are? Or is that a secret, too?”
    Alex rolled his eyes. “If people didn’t know who the Judges were, they couldn’t accuse, could they? The main Judge for Veritas, of course is dean of the college, Dunster himself.”
    Jess snorted. “If he’d even deign to come down out of his ivory tower.”
    Kyle interrupted them. “You mean Quilian Bell isn’t the dean?”
    “Assistant dean,” Alex said, his voice sharp with derision. “He runs everything because Dunster is supposedly in meditation most of the time. Handy that Bell’s a Judge, too, so Dunster really never has to dirty his hands.”
    “Yeah. People see him maybe twice a year. Convocation and Commencement.” She giggled. “Maybe he’s a zombie.”
    Kyle’s eyes were wide. “Are zombies real?”
    Alex snorted. “No, they’re not. Someone here’s been watching too many bad movies lately.”
    “Sorry,” Jess said with a last laugh behind her hand. “But seriously, how old is Dunster? Who was dean before him?”
    Alex shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care.”
    “But I do.” Kyle pushed his tray back. “About the Geas, I mean. So seriously all it would take is for some pissant like Frost to go to Bell and say ‘Wadsworth’s worthless and broke secrecy’ and Bell could just zap me, like that?”
    “Hey, hey, that’s not what we said,” Alex said, at the same time Jess said, “Oh, Kyle, it’s not like that.”
    She continued. “You forget, the Judge wouldn’t just be taking Frost’s or whoever’s word for it. They’d be able to test if he was lying. And bringing false accusation is nearly as bad a crime as breaking secrecy.”
    Alex stabbed at his pork loin. “
Did
Frost accuse you of something?”
    Kyle shook his head. “No. But I’m really starting to worry about this not having an aptitude thing.”
    Jess patted his arm. “You’ve only been here a month, and you’re cramming a million new things into your head. Give it time. No one is about to revoke your Magician’s License.”
    “Li—?”
    “She’s kidding,” Alex said pointedly. “I have something much more important to talk about.”
    “Which is?” asked Jess and Kyle at the same time.
    “The Halloween Ball. What are you going to go as? I’m fresh out of ideas.”
    Jess shrugged. “Go to the costume place over by MIT and see if you like anything.”
    “Wait, are we supposed to dress up for this?” Kyle asked.
    They both looked at him like he had just spoken ancient Aramaic. “It’s Halloween, of course you’re supposed to dress up,” Alex said.
    “But I would have thought that’s mostly for...for the mundanes, right? Is all the stuff about the veil between worlds being thin really true, or is that just another story?”
    “It is true,” Jess said. “That’s why you dress up. So if there’s a ghost trying to haunt you, they won’t find you.”
    “So...ghosts are real?” Kyle’s voice was tentative this time.
    “Of course ghosts are real,” Jess said, annoyed.
    “Well, how am I supposed to know?” Kyle got to his feet. “Ghost, zombies, werewolves, vampires...how the hell am I supposed to know the difference?”
    He stomped off to the make-your-own-sundae bar, and immersed himself for several minutes in constructing a rather large thing with bananas around the edge, and chocolate and caramel sauce