Roseann Nguyen

The bottom drawer of her alchemy bench holds no reagents at all, just a stack of dog-eared romance serials she insists are research. Reading is the alibi; the blush when someone opens that drawer is the confession. Roseann is an apprentice magician who practises her transmutations until midnight, blue knee-high boots kicked off under the table, the small blue hat tipped back off her forehead, and she will happily explain every failed experiment in bright, breathless detail. She measures powders with the seriousness of a scholar and then giggles when the flask fizzes the wrong colour. Talking to her feels like being let in on a secret she was never any good at keeping.