The Star-Chamber: An Historical Romance, Volume 2 by William Harrison Ainsworth (freda ebook reader .txt) 📕

He focused his attention on the chief mage and the president. Both were present, although only the mage was required to be here.

“We’ll get started in a second, but I think everyone should be aware that this is being done for a reason.” He always found it best to attach something of significance to make them cooperate better. The old ‘carrot instead of the stick’ philosophy. “A student was injured in this illegal use of magic. There was a near miss with a lightning strike that knocked the poor kid out for hours.”

He watched closely at reactions. Some were horrified at the statement, some looked concerned, but didn’t think it applied to them, and one didn’t seem to care at all. He made a mental note to focus his attention on the latter individual.

“Mr. President,” he addressed the lawyer. “I’m going to need a fresh physical for Mr. Cameron Dupree. He has a right under the WRA to know what happened, and he has a right to press charges if he was injured by unauthorized magic. There is a reason these provisions are in place.”

The last statement got a mixed reaction. For the most part, magic was unregulated. The WRA only mentioned permitting and legal registration requirements for higher-level magics, or magic use that could affect the welfare of others. Large scale weather magic fit the bill, especially after the incidents in India during the last drought. Someone had tried to make it rain and killed thousands in mudslides and flooding. Vernon hadn’t been assigned to that cleanup, or the hunt for the perpetrator, but he’d read the reports.

Since all the teachers were mages, they saw the wisdom of having limits, but being humans, they didn’t like being told what to do; especially when they considered themselves the apex of humanity. He was fine with that. They could think of themselves however they wanted, but if they took it too far, it was his job to stomp them back down.

“Mr. President?” Vernon asked when the man was slow to respond.

“I’ll call the nursing staff at once,” the sweaty man replied, and got on his phone to do just that.

“Excellent,” Vernon pulled out the same artifact he’d used for the students, and a few others he’d been saving for the people he needed to take a closer look at. “Let’s get started.”

Chapter 11

I didn’t know what Lilith had done, but the floor monitor in charge of ensuring all students were signed back into their dorms on the weekend didn’t bat an eye when I walked into the building just before nine. The guy didn’t even raise an eyebrow at the field dressing that was still wrapped around my chest. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. What did she have to do to save my ass for breaking curfew?

Generally, I didn’t think of myself as a chivalrous guy. Chivalry was long dead, and even if it wasn’t, there was no way Lilith needed anything from me. I’d seen her throw another supernatural through a fucking wall with nothing but the power of her mind. What was I going to do that rivaled that?

“Feed her my super cum,” my brain helpfully supplied. “And make that money.” I chuckled to myself and headed upstairs.

My door was locked, and when I opened it, nothing looked out of place. I half-expected to see the place ransacked by Aveena’s people, but it looked just as semi-organized as I remembered. The first thing I did was text Jerome. He lived two floors down and could be up in a few minutes. I needed a neutral third party to act as Switzerland between me and the Fae noble. As far as I knew, she had no beef with the werewolf. Her changelings bought weed from him like everyone else.

Next, I needed to get changed. I couldn’t walk around with the dressing on all day. That would bring a lot of unwanted questions. Three, I needed to take a shower. I hadn’t even washed my dick since Chloe tried to drown me.

Gently, to avoid aggravating the wound, I slowly undid the makeshift sling. My body ached as I untied the knot and slid it over my head. Next was the blood-stained bandage. The adhesive edge was already starting to peel away, but it still hurt like hell when I ripped it off, and pulled more than a little hair off my chest.

“Huh,” I looked at the wound, or more specifically, the lack of one.

The skin around where I remembered being stabbed was still a fresh pink. There was some black and purple bruising around the area, but other than that, there was no stab wound from the glamour dagger that tried to pierce my heart.

“Score one for sex magic,” I assumed. I’d literally spent all night in bed with Lilith, and if she wanted me in her harem, she wouldn’t settle for damaged goods. “Add that to the pro’s column.”

Most supernatural species had the ability to heal themselves much more rapidly than humans. Shifters, for example, as long as they weren’t hit with silverbane, could heal from bullet wounds in minutes. The ability to heal themselves was something that made the supernatural so much more dangerous than the average human. If a human soldier got shot, they were down for weeks. If a supernatural got shot, assuming the bullet didn’t just bounce off their skin, it barely slowed them down as they continued their attack. While that healing was common, the ability to heal others was much rarer.

Mages had spells to speed things along, cure cancer, and even pull poison out of your bloodstream, but it took a lot of magical energy to do simple things like make a broken arm heal twice as fast as normal. They