But it’s also one of the best ways to die. Maintenance-track kids end up skipping around half their lessons, so they’re always on the razor’s edge of failing dangerously, and they miss out on a lot of theory and advanced spells. More to the point, they’re the ones who have to go into the rooms with the mysterious holes in the walls, the leaking pipes, the burned-out lights; the places where the wards are wobbly and the mals are more likely to wriggle in. And you can’t sign up for maintenance track and then just skip your shifts. If you don’t adequately complete your maintenance shift within the week it’s due, you aren’t allowed into the cafeteria again until it’s done. And if you don’t do someone else’s maintenance shift that you’ve promised to do, they don’t get to go into the cafeteria, so enclavers keep a sharp eye on their little helpers. Most enclavers, anyway.

“Someone else from New York made the arrangements for you, didn’t they, and you don’t even know,” I said. “That’s sad, Lake. At least say thank you once in a while to the poor kid.” Poor kid, ha. I’d have gone for maintenance track myself in a flash: I’ve already got a massive target stuck on my back. But actually the competition for it is quite stiff, and I had to give up in the first fortnight because I couldn’t find an enclaver to hire me. They wouldn’t even talk to me, so I didn’t have much opportunity to suck up to them. To be fair, opportunity clearly wasn’t my only hurdle there.

He flushed. “What are you doing for your shift?”

“Cleaning the labs,” I said. Alchemy lab cleaning shifts are lousy the way any maintenance shift is lousy, but it’s nothing like as bad as trying to patch a hole in a wall or mend a warding spell. Once, I had to fix a fraying ward over an air vent in one of the seminar rooms, close to the shop. The protection had worn so thin that there was literally a pack of scuttlers waiting to come through. They’d pressed the frontmost ones right squish up against it: five or six pairs of round lemur eyes staring at me full of hungry longing, drooling from their mouths full of needle-teeth. I finally got fed up and wasted a bit of mana to physically shove them back into the vent far enough so that I didn’t have to look at them until I had woven the new barrier spell into place.

Cleaning’s not nearly as dangerous, even in the labs. There might be a bit of acid or contact poison or some iffy alchemical substance left behind, but that’s not hard to catch. Most kids don’t bother, they just fill a bucket of soapy water, slap an animation spell on some rags and a mop, shove them in, and keep watch on the process from the door. But unless I’m really knackered, I do it all by hand. In the commune we all did upkeep on a rota, and my mum wouldn’t let me use magic, so I know my way around a mop and bucket. I was aggrieved at the time. Now it means I actually get some mana out of the deal instead of the reverse, and I’ve occasionally found some usable supplies among the leftovers. It’s still not a magical good time, though.

“I’ll come with,” Orion said.

“You’ll what?” I said, and laughed when he wasn’t joking: everyone would really think he was in love. “Don’t let me stop you.”

* * *

HIS HELP MADE short work of my shift, and we spent the rest of the weekend in the library together. I have to admit I took a lot of petty and objectively stupid satisfaction from the way the New York crew all eyed me anxiously every time we walked past their corner in the reading room, to and from meals. I knew better. I should have been chumming up with all of them. I wasn’t dating Orion, but he really was my friend; that wasn’t just a temporary illusion. I had an actual in at New York. If they took me in, I wouldn’t need to worry about finding any other allies. I could pop on one of those power-sharers and glide all the way to the gates and right on through like I was on ice skates. I wouldn’t even need to grovel, I suspected, just make myself decently polite.

But I didn’t. I didn’t encourage any of the enclaver kids who kept trying to make up to me; I just cold-shouldered them all. I wasn’t subtle about it, either. On Saturday night, on our way to brushing our teeth, Aadhya actually said to me, tentatively, “El, have you got some kind of a plan going?”

I instantly knew what she meant. But I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want to be talked sensibly out of my stupid behavior. After a pause, Aadhya said, “It is what it is. I was really popular at school outside. Soccer and gymnastics, a million friends. But my mom sat me down a year before induction and told me I was going to be a loser in here. She didn’t say it like, be ready if that happens. She just told me flat-out.”

“You aren’t a loser,” I said.

“Yeah, I am. I’m a loser because I have to think about it all the time: how am I getting out of here? We have one year left, El. You know what graduation is going to be like. The enclave kids are going to pick and choose from the best of us. They’ll hand out shields and power-sharers, and cast a timespear or light up a kettler and zoom right out the gates, and the mals will come for everybody else. We don’t want to be everybody else in that scenario. Anyway, what are you going to do after? Go live in a hut in the Rockies?”

“A yurt in Wales,” I muttered, but she was right, obviously. It was everything I’d planned on, in fact, with one crucial exception. “They don’t want me, Aadhya. They want Orion.”

“So what? Use it while you can,” Aadhya said. “Look, I’m only saying any of this because you’ve done me a solid, and I think you’re smart enough to hear it, so don’t get mad: you know you turn people off.”

“But not you?” I said, trying to sound cool about it, when I didn’t feel cool at all.

“I wasn’t immune or anything,” she said. “But my mom also told me to be polite to rejects, because it’s stupid to close doors, and suspicious of people who are too nice, because they want more from you than they’re letting on. And she was right. Jacky W turns out to be Hannibal Lecter, and you turn out to be so hardcore you’d ditch New York and London to stick with me just because I didn’t completely rip you off trading.” She shrugged.

We were at the bathroom by then, so we couldn’t talk anymore: I seethed the whole way through brushing my teeth and washing my face and keeping watch for Aadhya’s turn. But on the way back, I burst out, “Just—why? What have I ever done that turns people off?”

I waited for her to say all the usual things: You’re rude, you’re cold, you’re mean, you’re angry, all the things people say to make it my fault, but she looked over at me and frowned like she was really thinking about it, and then she said with decision, “You feel like it’s going to rain.”

“What?”

But Aadhya was already waving her hands around and elaborating. “You know that feeling when you’re a mile away from anywhere, and you didn’t take your umbrella because it was sunny when you left, and you’re in your good suede boots, and suddenly it gets dark and you can tell it’s about to start pouring buckets, and you’re like Oh great.” She nodded to herself, satisfied with her brilliant analogy. “That’s what it feels like, whenever you show up.” She paused and glanced back behind us, making sure there wasn’t anyone in earshot, and then said to me abruptly, “You know, if you cheat a little too much, it can mess up your vibe. I know a kid in alchemy track who has a really good spirit cleanse recipe—”