Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling by Christopher Nuttall

she corrected herself, the young man. She cast a second charm over him and discovered that he was a mere sixteen years old, even though he looked older. A moment later, Dread bent down and searched the man with practiced ease, turning up nothing apart from a medallion hanging around his neck. There were a handful of tracking charms placed on it, all seemingly inactive.
    “No wand,” Dread said. “And he isn’t wearing school robes.”
    Elaine heard the puzzlement in his voice and frowned. Most magicians owned and used a wand, but there were quite a few who didn’t. Their magic worked better without one; Light Spinner, like most of the other Senior Magicians, wouldn’t use a wand at all unless she required absolute precision. A reputation for wand dependency would suggest to her enemies that removing her wand would render her helpless.
    But it was rare for a school-age youth not to own a wand. He would carry it everywhere, even if he didn’t use it regularly. Unless, of course, he had no magic.
    She raised her own wand and cast a levitation charm. “I’ll take him to the hospital,” she said, as she floated the stunned man into the air. Thankfully, it was easier to levitate someone else than herself. “Can you find out who he is and why he was here?”
    “I can try,” Dread said, with droll amusement.
    Elaine felt herself flushing. The only person who had any right to issue orders to the Inquisitors was Light Spinner, who also seemed rather amused at Elaine’s presumption. Irked at herself, Elaine manipulated her wand, sending the floating body drifting ahead of her as she walked away from the crowd. The hospital wasn’t far from the palace, thankfully. Levitation charms didn’t require much power, but maintaining them for long was incredibly draining.
    The hospital seemed to be in chaos as she entered, she discovered. Druids and healers were running everywhere, while a handful of City Guardsmen were bringing in wounded from the riot outside the palace. Elaine hesitated then, as she wasn't wearing her purple robes, lifted her Privy Council ring and showed it to one of the druids, who blanched. Everyone knew that the Privy Councillors had almost unlimited authority, even though Elaine rarely used it. She just didn’t have the mindset for going into a building and barking orders.
    But she had to right now.
    “I want a private room,” she said, sharply. “And a druid to attend me as soon as possible.”
    She thought better of that a moment later. “No, I want the druid once everyone else is dealt with,” she added. There was no reason to believe that her charge was in immediate danger; if she took a druid away from emergency medical care, it was likely that someone innocent would die. “Until then, find me a room.”
    The druid showed her to a small room, bringing back unhappy memories of the day she’d been turned into a Bookworm. Elaine levitated her charge inside and gently put him down on the bed, then collapsed into a chair in sudden exhaustion. It didn’t seem fair, somehow, that she knew so much, yet she didn’t have the power to make half of the spells she knew work. But she knew, better than anyone, that life wasn’t fair. Sweat prickled her back as she sagged, then forced herself to stand upright and take some water from the sink. She needed a drink desperately.
    Outside, she could hear the chaos growing louder as more and more patients were brought into the hospital. Elaine hoped that most of them could be healed quickly, but the druids were likely to be overworked and understaffed, particularly after a number of the most powerful druids had been killed by Kane. Taking another sip of water, she stepped over to the young man and started to cast another series of charms. The results seemed thoroughly unique.
    There was magic, but it was definitely concentrated in his brain. No matter how she fine-tuned the scans, it was definitely isolated ... she even ran a scan of herself, just to make sure