by Abbie Lyons
Violet looked at me, but said nothing.
“Speaking as a roommate? They’re discreet,” I said. “Most of the time.”
Lucy shrieked in delight as I related the story of my unfortunate move-in day and interrupting...whatever Violet and Marius had been up to. Violet didn’t seem mad, though. If anything, she looked relieved not to be staring at a piece of parchment.
“Hey, how was the test?” I asked Violet. She had a faraway look in her eyes that disappeared when she heard me.
“Test?”
“The one you skipped the party for,” Lucy said, putting her chin on her hands and elbows on her knees.
“Oh, right. Canon Law.” Violet rubbed her forehead. “It was a beast. My brain still hurts.” She opened her eyes. “I really should get back to work.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Lucy just wanted to find something for me to wear to the ball, but I don’t have anything, so we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Mm.” Violet nodded and got up from her bed. She looked so damn tired. I’d thought no one else was as stressed out over the theories of Chaos and its manifestations as I was, but Violet and all her studies might be a close runner-up.
“I can’t believe both of you are just going to wear whatever,” Lucy muttered.
I looked at Violet, then looked at my wardrobe, filled with nothing but uniforms and stylish—but decidedly casual—clothes.
I wasn’t a girl’s-night kind of girl. But maybe that was because I’d never really had girlfriends before.
I turned to Lucy.
“Is there anywhere to go shopping around here?”
Chapter Fifteen
There was—sort of.
“Rodeo Drive?” I said. We’d gotten dispensation to borrow some Elysium unicorns and discreetly travel into the human world, and, since it was a Saturday, Violet agreed she could spare some time.
“Is that not good?” Lucy said, eyes wide with panic. “I didn’t mean to insult you if that’s not acceptable in the human world, I just—”
“No, no,” I said, blinking into the sunshine and shielding my eyes with my hand. The sky overhead was a blazing blue and the bright boutiques around us looked like a movie set. “It’s plenty nice. I just figured maybe you all had your own...place for buying things.”
Lucy looked at Violet. Violet shrugged. “Humans do fashion the best,” she said simply. “Or that’s what we’ve always said, anyway.”
So for the next three hours, I found myself in a genuine teen-movie montage of trying on ball gowns, cocktail dresses, floating crepes and gleaming satins, laughing and tossing dress after dress onto a pile as a bemused shopgirl flitted around, desperately trying to maintain order in the chaos. Lower-case chaos, that is.
Finally, after much deliberation, we had our selections: a rosy pink draped number for Lucy, a sleek sapphire sheath for Violet, and for me...
“Oh my Gods!” Lucy jumped up and down, clapping a bit. “You look like literal Aphrodite!”
I surveyed myself in the mirror. The dress was flaming red, with a sweeping circle skirt to my ankles and a fitted, square-neck bodice.
“And it has pockets,” Lucy enthused. “The dream.”
“Who needs pockets at a ball?” I asked. “What am I going to carry, bus fare?”
Lucy swiped the air dismissively. “Stop looking for flaws. It’s perfect.”
The perfect outfit to go down in flames, I thought.
“I can’t afford it,” I said. Lucy shook her head vigorously. Apparently she’d come into quite an inheritance—the one upside of losing her whole family.
“My treat,” she insisted. “You have to have it.”
“WHAT IS LOVE?”
Professor Silvestri’s barking voice jolted me out of a near-nap state. I straightened over my desk. I knew there was really no point in going to classes, since I wasn’t a guardian and couldn’t actually implement any of this stuff, but on the off chance that it proved useful to my investigation of...whatever it was Marius was gesturing toward, I didn’t want to skip any lectures.
That didn’t mean I was any good at paying attention, however.
“What is love?” he repeated, striding briskly back and forth in front of his desk, his walking stick clutched behind him. “You!”
He rapped the walking stick on the desk of an unfortunate victim—Steve. Professor Silvestri squinted at him. “Whoa, hold up. You okay. What’s with the—” He drew a circle around his eyes. I peered at Steve. Sure enough, he had not one, but two, black eyes.
“Training,” Steve said proudly. “I’m going out for the team.”
“Eh, you don’t say,” Silvestri muttered. “Well, uh, good luck with that. Anyway—love. Talk to me.”
I expected Steve, loveable guy though he was, not to get this one even remotely correct. Maybe mutter something about butterflies in the stomach, or marriage, or whatever. But instead he sat up straight.
“According to the reading, there are theorized to be three kinds of love. First there is agape, which is an altruistic, selfless, unconditional love. But for humans, it’s very difficult to sustain that feeling long-term. Then there’s philia, so like, the kind of love that you feel for your friends?
And that represents love between people who considered themselves equals. Uh, and usually not having sex or anything. And then there’s eros, which is like...you know. Love love. The one that’s romantic and passionate and...physical.” Steve blushed a little.
“Well done,” Silvestri said, sounding as surprised as I felt.
“Thanks!” Steve said. “I actually just memorized that whole thing from the textbook.”
Silvestri sighed, but went back to the front of the classroom. “Right. So, anyway. Our job is to synthesize all of these, you know? Can’t do pure eros or things go pear-shaped. Human beings have an instinctual impulse to procreate, if you know what I mean. So you can’t throw too much of that in the mix. Gotta balance it out with some of that philia so that there’s a real bond to it, got it? People think what we do is all about just gettin’ people to bone down, but nooooo.” He huffed, his face going a purpled crimson. I could sense this was a sore spot for him. “That shit is for the seduction demons! What, do I look like a goddamn incubus?”
I raised my hand. I couldn’t help it.
“Yeah, Blondie.” Silvestri nodded. “What?”
“Well what about the other one?” I asked. “Agape?”
“Eh.” Silvestri shrugged. “That’s more a...higher plane kind of thing. It’s not about two people per se. Kind of out of our hands. It’s...” He glanced around the room. “Help me out here, someone. Did anyone do the reading besides Rocky Balboa here?”
Steve beamed. Someone else raised a hand—Violet.
“Agape’s something that has to come from within,” she said. “So there’s not too much we can do to forge it between two people. It’s something a human has to cultivate.”
“Yeah, exactly.” Silvestri nodded. “Although not just humans. All of us”—he pointed his walking stick around the room—“gotta get that agape flowing. You hear me?”
I WAS STILL CHEWING over the nature of love when I got to Professor Kennedy's class. And although everything she was saying was interesting, I barely could pick it up.
“Quinn?” Professor Kennedy's voice stopped me as I was heading out of the classroom, the rest of the students filtering around me. “Would you stay behind a minute?”
Out in the hallway, Lucy and Steve waited, but I gestured them off. They both shrugged and walked away, but slowly.
“What's up?” I asked Professor Kennedy. She leaned back against her desk and folded her arms.
“I need to preface this by saying that I am not a creeper.”
“Okay,” I said. “I didn't really think you were, but...”
“Just wanted to get that out of the way. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I'm kind of obsessed with true crime, like human true crime. Podcasts, documentaries, the whole bit.” She smi
led a bit sheepishly. “I know it's weird, but we all have to have our hobbies, right?”
“Sure.”
“And I admit I was a bit excited to go to San Francisco when I was assigned to pick you up and give you the information. The Zodiac Killer? One of my all-time faves. I mean, not that it was good that he killed so many people, but you know what I mean? It's really a classic.”
“Sure,” I said again, this time smiling a bit. You had to admire someone who was so unabashed in her love for serial killers.
“Anyway.” Professor Kennedy waved her hands in the air. “That's not what I wanted to talk to you about. My point is, I've been doing some research on my own time and I learned about the fire.”
“The fire,” I said.
“It was your apartment, wasn't it? Yours and your brothers.”
“At that point, it was technically just mine,” I said. “But yes.”
“Interesting.” She tapped her chin.
“What did you find out?” I asked. Somehow, in all the metaphysical wrestling I'd been doing with what the Order of Eden would have to do with Scott's death and whether or not I was going to blow to bits if Chaos energy poured out of me at some point during the ball, I had kind of forgotten that our apartment had mysteriously caught fire, let alone that I had perhaps hallucinated a hobo coming in to save me.
“Did they ever tell you the cause?” she asked.
I squinted. “Not that I remember. I mean, I was pretty dazed, honestly.” And later that night I was pretty drunk. “But I think it was some kind of gas explosion, or I'd have to think, anyway.”
“Right,” Professor Kennedy said. “That's what you would think ordinarily, with that kind of urban high-rise. But the thing is, they didn't actually find any of the traditional markers of a gas explosion.”
She fanned out a sheaf of papers on her desk. I glimpsed a lot of things about arts and investigations, chemical profiles, a bunch of stuff I didn't understand.
“So what's the TLDR?” I asked.
Professor Kennedy laughed. “Basically, I think there's more to the story. They closed the investigation for lack of evidence and chalked it up to an accident, which, again, makes the most sense, but it just doesn't feel accidental. And I'm sorry if this is too much, but doesn't it seem like very strange timing for you in particular? Your brother dies and then your apartment catches fire?”
And then I ended up here, I added in my mind. “Yeah, it's hella weird,” I said. “That whole day was surreal.”
“I imagine so,” she said, and lowered her head. “I don't think I was as sensitive as I should have been when I met you. I hope you can forgive me. I'm just new and excited and I think I came on a little strong.”
It's okay, I said, because it genuinely was.
“Anyway. I don't know if there's anything you can make of this. I don't know if it's useful, but I felt that you should know something might not be adding up.”
“Is there anything...” I hesitated, trying to think of how to put it. “Is there anything supernatural about what you found?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Like, does it have anything to do with any of all this?” I waved my hand around. “Like a Chaos thing or something.”
Professor Kennedy smiled, not unkindly, but I felt stupid immediately, as though I'd made a basic error in second grade math class.
“It's possible,” she said gently. “But I don't have any proof of that. Granted, I wasn't there to do any investigation myself.” She chuckled. “But usually when Chaos manifests, it's not a purely human disaster, like fire. It's more wide ranging, and it's not targeted on a single person or location.”
“So bad luck isn't a real thing,” I said. “Cupid's arrow is real, but not bad luck.”
Professor Kennedy sighed and shifted. “I know it's frustrating, especially if you grew up in human society. You learn about all of this and you want it to be some huge answer to everything, a cure to problems. But it's really just another way of seeing the problems. And sometimes preserving balance means we have to be okay with not understanding things.”
She was starting to sound like Marius. And that meant Marius was probably right.
“But there are some people who, you know, push boundaries and do things that are secret?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I'm not sure I follow.”
“Just, you know,” I said, equivocating. If she knew about the Order of Eden, I didn't want to tip my hand that I knew because she might clam up. But if she didn't think I knew, then maybe I could get something out of her. “Guardians who do stuff that we're not necessarily taught in class, but that they think is needed for some reason. Just like small groups.”
Professor Kennedy was silent. She shuffled her papers back into a pile and handed them to me.
“Sometimes people do try to find the truth,” she said. “That's what happened with the Children of Abaddon. They took it too far. They thought they had the answers and well. She shrugged. And of course you can't paint all groups with the same brush. I don't know that a secret society is necessarily a bad thing, but...is there something you know, Quinn? Something you need to tell me?”
I opened my mouth. Shut it. Considered.
“Let me give you a little unsolicited advice,” she said, again not sounding unkind. “I've gotten involved with people who were deep into struggles with themselves, with people in power, with the whole system. Got involved romantically. I mean. It hurts. It can hurt a lot. And I learned things. I uncovered secrets. But was it worth it?” She shrugged. “I don't know. I'm here now. And that's good. But sometimes if people want to be left alone and pursue whatever they're pursuing, they mean it, and you shouldn't get entangled.” She looked me hard in the eye.
“I'll keep that in mind,” I said shortly. “Is there anything else?”
“Nope,” she said, relaxing a bit. “That's it. But hey, I bet you're excited for the ball, right?”
“Sure,” I said. “I think it's going to be a blast.”
Hopefully not literally.
Chapter Sixteen
The next few days were high tension and high drama. Lucy would not stop fretting about the ball. And even though we'd become friends and I didn't want to be a jerk, I was getting a little sick of it.
“I just really want to stand out,” she said. “It feels symbolic, you know? Important.”
“Sure,” I said. I was flipping through the pages that Professor Kennedy had given me and alternating between that and my actual homework, which wasn't particularly interesting.
“I really hope the music is good,” she said. “Something we can dance to and not like that traditional demon music stuff. I don't know if you've ever heard it in your human world, but it sounds like, I don't know, bad heavy metal or something.”
“Yeah,” said Steve, who was a few feet away in an armchair. His black eyes had faded, but now he had a busted lip.
“What the hell happened to your face?” I asked.
“I was practicing dive bombs,” Steve said. “It turns out the ground comes at you pretty fast. But it's cool. I'll get better. I just—oof.” He winced, rotating his shoulder a bit. “That still hurts.”
“I also haven't gotten anyone to sign up for the newspaper,” Lucy said. “It's like people don't care about what's going on at school.”
“Well, what are you going to report on?” Steve said. “I'll read it if it's interesting.”
“I don't know what I'm going to report on until I have reporters,” she said. “That's how journalism works.”
“You could report on the sports scores,” Steve said.
Lucy slumped. “So far, that's basically the only news there is around here. If anything exciting is going on, I don't have any clue about it. I need someone to do investigating.”
The word investigating pricked up my ears. “Investigating what?”
“I don't know,” she said. “Investigating. Why is this so complicated?”
“Okay
. Sorry,” I said, backing off a little. My mind was putting together a plan. If I had the guise of the school newspaper that was slowly coming to fruition in Lucy's imagination, then maybe I could poke around to get some information about things.
Or at least if I got caught doing it, I would get in less trouble.
“I've even made up little like business cards,” she said. She reached into her messenger bag and fanned out a bunch of creamy paper rectangles with a seal and a motto stamped on them.
Steve took one and squinted at it. “All the news that prints?” he said.
“It's a work in progress,” Lucy said. “Give that back. Those are for reporters only.”
“Can I have one?” I asked. “I mean, can I be one? A reporter.”
Lucy blinked at me. “Sure. I mean, of course. Ideally, we're going to have a much bigger staff soon, but if you want to get us started...” She looked really grateful. “Maybe if one person breaks the seal, then more people will get interested.”
“Sure,” I said. She offered a business card and I took it.
“I think I want to do...” I was thinking fast. “A piece about school history, something about the temple building, how it came to be, what it means.”
“Oh yeah,” Lucy said tepidly. “That could be...interesting.”
“It'll be good,” I said with more confidence. “I could do a piece about each of those statue things holding up the front.”
“The archangels?” Steve said. “Isn't that literally just history class?”
“Well, I don't know. We haven't gotten there yet,” I said. “But this would be more about, you know, the actual building of the temple, how it got there, what it means, all the nooks and crannies of the building.”
Lucy looked hesitant, and I could tell that she was torn between signing off an idea that was admittedly boring and terrible and admitting that there was basically nothing else to put in her newspaper. “It sounds great,” she said finally. “Can you file copy by tomorrow night?”
I had no idea what filing copy meant. “Sure,” I said. “I'll start researching today.”