Chapter 29: *CHAPTER 29*

Malcolm came up behind me, crowding me in the cramped office space, the side of his jeans jostling my shoulder. His skin on mine sent another hot shock through me, a tingling in the Curse Mark, "What does it say?" Barely suppressed curiosity rang in his voice.

"The test was inconclusive."

Malcolm's eyebrows shot up his forehead and he reached for the paper, leaning over me to do so. I shoved him off me with an elbow and he grunted again as Richard handed over the paper. Pointedly ignoring me, Malcolm scanned over the document.

"What does inconclusive mean?" I asked.

"It means," Richard blinked up at me, resurfacing from his thoughts as if just remembering anyone was in the room with him, "That while you don't have any Elemental Magic, you aren't necessarily non-Magical either."

That wasn't confusing at all.

Eyebrows raised, I glanced up to Malcolm waiting for him to explain. His eyes flickered from where they studied the paper and down to my waiting eyes, expression furrowing, "If you were just human, the test would have come back 'negative'. Since it didn't, we can't say for certain what you are."

"But I am just human," I told them. I was certain of it. I'd never had anything magical ever happen to me. Not ever. Well, I quickly amended, until recently anyway. "Your test is probably just wrong." I offered with a shrug.

"That's the thing, the Placement Test is almost never wrong." Malcolm placed the paper back on the desk in front of Richard.

"Kassie," Richard said, head tipped to the side as he studied me, "With your permission, I'd like to run the test again, just to be certain. And if a second test proffers the same results, I'd like to have a more thorough Blood Analysis done."

I chewed on the inside of my cheek, eyeing the now wrinkled set of results in the center of Richard's desk, "What would the 'more thorough Blood Analysis' tell you?"

"Well, in short, the more thorough test—we call it a magical microbiome evaluation, or MME for short—would give us a better understanding of the way the electromagnetic pulses in your cells are generated. From it we'd be able to see how your energies interact and get a better understanding of where your chemical makeups lie. "

I leaned back in the seat, feeling a wave of wooziness coming back over me—less from the idea of having to go through more tests and more from the idea of having more needles jabbed into me. But, if we were going to get to the bottom of this, the Curse and everything that it entailed, if we were going to be able to figure out how to break it, then I'd need to do everything I could on my end. I knew I was human. And if this was the way to convince them---

No page left unturned and all that.

"Alright," I said, new determination taking root. I placed my hand on the table in the desk between me and Richard. It looked small even to my own eyes among the machines and books piled around his office, "Pull out the needles, Richard."

By the time we left the University, the sun was beginning to set off the edge of campus. I was sporting more needle wounds than I cared to look too closely at. Just the sight of the cotton balls Richard had taped carefully to my skin had my stomach clenching uncomfortably.

The second round of testing ended with the same results. Inconclusive. In turn, Richard had taken even more blood for the MME, along with a strand of my hair to send off to a lab. Apparently, the MME would take more time than the Placement Testing would. Richard had explained that the Magi only did the very thorough testing in a few Covens, so we'd have to wait to hear back once the testing was complete.

The walk back to Malcolm's truck and the ensuing drive home were both quiet, Malcolm toting a few hefty-looking books Richard had sent along with me, wanting me to go over them. Books on divination according to their titles. He wanted me to go through a few passages he'd marked off and find what seemed most similar to the type of experience I'd had at the cafe. To find out if it were some sort of vision like he suspected, or something else entirely.

While Malcolm maneuvered the truck out of the parking lot and toward the freeway, I pulled the one on the top of the stack into my lap to flip through a few pages of the first one on the drive back. The first one I pulled into my lap was old—the script blocky and tiny, my already fuzzy head swimming just at the sight of those teensy jumbled words.

I asked, "So how long do you think we can ignore the fact that we're technically married?"

Malcolm made a sound like he was choking.

Unable to stop myself any longer, I glanced in his direction. It was impossible to decipher the expression on his face. Apprehension? Discomfort? Pain? I let myself tentatively poke at the Bond between us but his walls were impossible to get through at the moment. Though, there was something cold slipping out through the seams. It took me a moment to recognize what that coldness was--panic.

"What do you mean?" He finally asked, tone careful.

I fumbled for words for a moment, before everything that had been bottling up inside of me came pouring out, "I mean...have you told anyone else about whatever this is?" I babbled, gesturing between us, "Is it supposed to be secret? Or is it a marriage in the typical sense of the word? Because if it is, it doesn't seem fair because neither of us had a choice in the matter. And if not, what are the rules for it exactly? Not to mention, the Bond feels like it's trying to pull us together somehow. Do you feel it too? I feels like I'm going crazy somehow. What are we supposd to do about that?"

Malcolm briefly looked away from the road to eye me for a moment, whatever he'd been feeling before being overtaken by bewilderment. He cleared his throat, before focusing back on the darkening roads.

"You're right," he finally said, shocking me, "we probably should have talked about this sooner." He scrubbed a hand down the back of his neck as he weighed what he was about to say. "And to answer your question, no one outside of Richard, Jenna, Caleb, and the Coven Head knows about us. Honestly, with everything else going on, I haven't really had time to process it all yet. So, I haven't thought about who should know and who shouldn't know."

He continued to look towards the road, brow furrowing. I leaned a little closer to him as I absorbed everything he said.

"And as to the particulars of what the Bond means for us, all I can tell you is that I have no idea. This is all as new to me as it is to you," He admitted, "But I don't think there are any hard and fast rules when it goes to the Bond--or Marriage, I guess-- whatever you want to call it. The rules are whatever we want to make them and we can figure it out as we go."

There was something calming about the careful way he laid everything out. As he spoke, the tight ball of stress that had been slowly mounting, loosened. The pressure in my shoulders I hadn't even realized was there began to relax. The idea that we could make our own rules--together--caught me off-guard.

"And as to the...other thing," he cleared his throat, hands tightening on the steering wheel, "The Bond pulling us together. No, you're not crazy. I've been feeling the pull from it as well." When I didn't say anything for a long moment, he glanced my way. "You alright over there?"

I blinked over at him, "Yeah, I'm good." The acknowledgement from him that the Magical pull was there was enough to ease some of the crazy tension I felt like was leaking through me in droves, "And about the heartbeat thing, is that something you hear all the time or does the wall block that out too?"

I don't think I was imagining the flash of discomfort across his face before he smoothed it out, "Unfortunately, the wall doesn't block that out, no."

I hadn't given much thought to what it must be like to have someone's heartbeat blaring in the background all the time.

"I wonder why you have it and I don't," I contemplated aloud, chewing on my bottom lip.

He shrugged, "I guess there's a chance you might hear it eventually."

"What's it like? Is it annoying?" I asked, curiosity taking over.

He huffed low under his breath, "I mean, I wouldn't say it's annoying exactly...just weird. I guess I'm somewhat used to it now."

Weird was one word for it. I didn't know what to think or feel about someone feeling my heartbeat all the time. It wasn't as intrusive as someone having a front-row seat to every thought that popped into my head, but it was still...intimate in a way I wasn't familiar with. And intimacy made me uncomfortable. I knew that Malcolm would block it out if he could, so I couldn't blame him for my discomfort. Couldn't blame him for any of it. He was as much of a victim in all of this as I was. And that thought was enough for any lingering hostility I felt toward him to dissipate.

I glanced his way again, "I know it goes without saying...but this whole thing is fucking weird."

Malcolm laughed, filling the empty spaces of the cab with his amusement. I hadn't heard him laugh like this before--it was a low raspy sound that warmed something in my chest.

"Yeah," he agreed as his amusement died down, "It's really fucking weird."

Thankfully, the weird comraderie was broken by Malcolm's phone vibrating on the truck bench between us with a call as he pulled the truck into the neighborhood. Malcolm eyed his phone's screen, his jaw tensing the slightest bit before answering.

I watched him from the corner of my eye as I gathered the books from Richard into my lap to carry into the house as he listened to whoever was speaking on the other end of the line. Malcolm grunted a few times, expression shifting to something grim as he listened. "I'll be there in fifteen," he finally said before hanging up, clutching the phone tightly in his fist.

"Is everything okay?" I asked as his truck came to an idle near the Pembroke's house.

"Tell Jenna that I'm going to be late coming back to the house tonight," Malcolm said to me. It was the first I'd noticed how tired he sounded.

"You're not coming in?" I asked.

"I can't. I need to go into work," he ran a tired hand over his jaw, tone as grave as I'd ever heard it, "Another magi was murdered."