Aisling cocked her head, and Andrea sighed. "Bruh, you've said no to all my suggestions. At some point, you're gonna have to give in."
Her pretty Irish friend pouted before finally shaking her head. "I mean, it's your money at the end of the day."
"Bugger that," Valerie said, cringing at the shrunken head that Andrea was holding. "People think she's queer enough, Aisling. How much more queer would she be if she were walking around with a shrunken head slight bigger than her own?"
Andy rolled her eyes, but that did not stop her from putting the head back. "According to the information tag over here, if I link it to my soul, I'd be able to see through it! Now, don't tell me that isn't a baller move?"
"It also says here that if someone destroyed it whilst you were linked in, you'd lose your eyesight," Zoya said, matter-of-factly.
Andrea frowned. "It says that?"
Aisling laughed as she picked up a knife. "You're not very good at reading."
"Reading is for millennials," Andrea said while picking up a pair of dirty white sneakers that had some wings on them. "I'll just ChatGPT it."
"Seven more minutes!" Professor Kumar called out in a deep voice from somewhere in the college's inventory room. The room was like something from out of a museum—filled with large shelves containing doodads and knick-knacks—and Andrea doubted that she could make much headway even if she was given a year to go through them all.
"You're going to want to take this selection thing seriously, Andy," Aisling said, her eyes focused on the knife's information tag. "If your spell casting is still lagging, you can try using a magical object to help you out."
She took the suggestions with as much grace as she could muster—which was to say that she ignored it as she dangled the sneakers above her head. "Sure thing. How do we claim these objects anywho?"
"By signing them out," Kumar said, spooking the girls as they turned to face him. How it was that he was so nimble was beyond Andrea. Professor Shubman Kumar was sturdier than a Pop Smoke music video, with a barrel chest that would have fit on a 1950s strongman. He had a thick black beard that covered the upper portion of his chest; it was only surpassed in its magnificence by his flowing mane of beautiful hair. With the devilish shape of his bushy and dark eyebrows, Andrea thought that he looked like a Bollywood villain—but had the demeanor of a grandma. He had a smile that was easygoing and always stood with his hands behind his back, like a monk on HGH or something. "Ah, if my memory serves, those are the Kicks of Hermes."
Andrea looked at the sneakers. "'Kicks?'" she snorted. "What—did you guys let an American name these, Professor?"
He chuckled before nodding his head. "Just so. The information tag may yet tell me otherwise, but I believe that they belonged to an American magician-hunter from Memphis. If you were of a magician's bloodline, you might have known him, Ms. Salem."
Andrea wondered why he had said that, and only then remembered that her family was supposedly from Tennessee. "Oh… yeah, it's a pity that my family is so boring."
"How'd they end up here though, Professor?" Aisling asked, and he turned his gentle, dark-brown eyes to her. "Unfortunately, Mr. James had become a bit of a serial killer. He no longer fulfilled his duty for duty's sake; he began to take a perverse pleasure in it. So, a magician from New Orleans put him down, and our headmaster acquired the item from her."
That made her ears perk up, but she tried to keep her cool by looking at the information tag. She attempted to hide her surprise, but Kumar noticed it immediately. "Do you know the name?" he asked.
Andrea froze as Aisling took a look at the tag and laughed. "Bordeaux? I haven't heard that name in an age! These sneakers must be older than dirt, Professor."
Kumar leaned in to read the tag's date and chuckled again. "I do not know how to feel about 1994 being considered 'older than dirt', Ms. Ryan. I had only just graduated from the college in Ludhiana."
Valerie could not hide her shock and said, "No way—you're not even fifty years old, Professor?"
Zoya smacked her on the shoulder. "Bruv! Keep it together, yeah." She then turned to the professor and said, "Sorry about her, Professor. She's from a dockyard, there's no manners there."
He raised a calming hand and smiled. "No offense taken, Ms. Ramdani. I am sure that Ms. Williams is not used to having a professor too young to have been in the war."
She had never seen Valerie blush—never mind look so sheepish—as she rubbed the back of her neck. "Yeah, sorry Professor. I'm used to being around geezers who'd go on and on about their time down there in Normandy."
He laughed at that. "You and I both, Ms. Williams."
"We have less than a couple of minutes," Andrea noted, looking back at the sneakers. "So what do you say, Professor? Would a serial killer's sneakers look good on me or what?"
He held out a very large hand for the sneakers and read the tag. "They are difficult to master, Ms. Salem," he said, turning the tag over and showing her something written in Latin. "See here—preferably for strong sorcerers and magicians."
Andrea felt a twinge of delight. "I'm sure that I can get the hang of them if I break them in enough."
He smiled, and gave her back the sneakers before snapping his fingers. He reached behind his back and—from some-fucking-where—pulled out a giant golden object that looked like a violent baby's rattle. "Do you know what this is, Ms. Salem?"
Don't say baby rattle, don't say baby rattle, don't say baby rattle…
"A hammer, maybe?" she asked, and he chuckled. "No—it achieves the same thing. It is a Gada, or a mace, in English. A gift handed down to me from my ancestors."
"An heirloom…" Valerie said, mystified. She and Aisling both stared at the object in awe, while Zoya looked more like Andrea—confused.
"Just so," Kumar said, laughing. "Good to know that you pay attention in my lectures after all."
Andrea looked at the giant thing and even she could see just how much magical aura was radiating off of it. "So, you got that as a gift from your father or something, Professor?"
"Great-uncle," he corrected her. "But in essence, yes, I inherited it from a forefather. Do you know what makes heirlooms such a gift and a curse, Ms. Salem?"
Andrea had barely glanced through her notes before class and could vaguely remember what an heirloom object was. "No. Sorry, Professor…"
"It is okay," he said, tapping the bottom of her chin with his mace. "Maybe the fault lay with me for being so boring, ay? An heirloom's blessing is that the magical proficiency and reserves of the wielder are irrelevant for linking, as the link has already been created through the soul of predecessors."
Andrea felt that itch again to pull out her Grimoire and stare at the spiderweb on cover. She had no doubt that Anansi was grinning right now, listening in on this conversation.
"I will not reveal the level of my power or that of this mace," he said, waving it around as if it were nothing, despite the fact that its top was the size of his head and the haft was the length of a full-grown man's arm. "But I will say that this mace is several levels above what I can do on my own, and because it is an heirloom, cannot be wielded by those who lack my own blood."
Andrea stared at the mace before looking at the pair of sneakers. These kicks aren't worth a damn compared to that thing…
Professor Kumar winced and quickly put away the mace. "And what about the curse?" Zoya asked, and for the first time, the professor's easygoing exterior faltered, before he sighed and said, "A fair ask. The curse of using my heirloom is the price paid by any of my family who wishes to use it."
He hesitated, seemed resolve to continue, then exhaled in relief a second before the bell rang. "Unfortunatel— Ms. Ramdani—that will be an answer for another day."
Kumar turned to look back at Andrea and looked noticeably older somehow. "The point is, Ms. Salem: if even an heirloom given to me by several lines of my family still demands a heavy toll, imagine what those sneakers would ask of you?"
He turned and made his exit, and they all shared a look before Valerie shrugged. "I think he doesn't want you to take those sneakers, Andrea."
They laughed as they exited the inventory room, which looked like a warehouse on the inside, but once the door was closed, looked like a boiler room in the ass-crack of a factory.
"And way to go with making him so uncomfortable there, lass," Valerie said, sticking her tongue out at Zoya. "You can't go asking a man what his family is cursed with. Might as well ask him to whip it out and put it next to your ruler."
Zoya cringed at the remark. "Ew! Not on your life! And besides, he did it to educate Andy. If anyone is to blame for this, it's her fault for not knowing anything."
Andrea laughed. "I know enough not to ask a man what he is cursed with. Might as well have pulled a measuring tape out with you, Zee."
They laughed as they ascended the stairs to rejoin the part of the college that did not look like a factor.
"Yeah," Valerie said, grinning like a maniac. "I got my eyes on that sword."
Aisling frowned. "The sword of Damnation?"
"Just so," she said, mocking their Arcana professor. "The one that takes a bit of your opponent's soul with each cut."
"But takes a wee bit of your sanity each time you unsheathe it," Aisling replied, wagging her finger at Valerie. "You're a right menace, Williams."
She grinned at her in response. "Yeah, well, you've known that since the first, Ryan."
"How long have you two actually known each other?" Andrea asked as the four of them made for the cafeteria. "I'd thought that you were just some loser who wanted to suck up to Aisling. Turns out you're just some lame who knows her."
Aisling answered before Valerie had a chance to respond. "Magical families are a tight-knit community, as you can imagine. We went to the same primary school together, but before that, mine and hers had a passing knowledge of each other from the war, and when they came to Ireland, they stopped by ours."
Valerie smiled, and genuinely did not look like an asshole for the first time in a minute. "That was a good time… could've done with meeting a lot less inbred people."
Aisling smacked the laughing Valerie's shoulder, and Zoya scrunched her nose. "Please tell me she's taking the piss?"
Aisling rolled her deep blue eyes and said, "She's acting the maggot, obviously, Zee. She thinks because we're Irish, and a magical family, it doubles the chance of me being inbred."
Andrea smiled and patted her friend on the shoulder. "Your eyes always did seem a little too close together."
That made Valerie howl, and Andrea thanked God again for giving her long legs as she bolted.
"You'll never catch—"
She felt Aisling's arms take her around the waist and lift her into the air. Andrea laughed the entire way up. "Okay! Okay, you caught me!"
Aisling threatened to throw her through a wall—which only made Andrea laugh more—before she finally put Andy down, laughing as well.
"You're not very nice to me," Aisling said, still giggling. Andrea threw her arms around her friend's neck and smashed their cheeks together. "No—whoever said that I'd be nice to you, baby girl? That wasn't part of the deal."
Zoya and Valerie finally caught up, and she felt Aisling's arm curl around her waist. "Yeah, I guess they weren't either…"
Andrea smiled as Zoya and Valerie walked past them. "Will youse lot hurry up," Valerie complained. "I want to get some good seats."
For the first time that she could remember, Andrea was not annoyed by Valerie's complaining. No— I guess they weren't…