by A. L. Knorr
She piled her utensils, used napkins, coffee cup and juice cup onto her tray.
“Do you want me to come to your room at noon?” I asked. “Be there with you when Christy gives you the news?”
April gave me another dazzling smile. “Sure. If you want.”
She slid her tray from the table and took it to the collection trolley before leaving the room with a spring in her step.
Gage’s eyes never left her until she disappeared, then he turned to me, complexion still waxy. “She’s definitely in shock.”
Fourteen
Unprecedented
Gage was helping me remake my bed with dryer-warm linens when the sound of tires skidding on gravel had us flying to the window. Basil’s compact SUV—a Range Rover Epoque—came to a halt on the driveway.
“He’s early,” I murmured. It wasn’t yet noon.
Basil’s window lowered as Dr. Price emerged from the academy lobby and jogged to the vehicle. The headmaster peered out from behind the steering wheel.
“She looks truly freaked.” Gage stood at my back, arms wrapping around me. His breath wafted past my cheek.
I agreed. A brief but tense conversation ensued, then Dr. Price stepped back. Basil continued on through the archway and vanished from sight while Christy returned to the front entrance of the manor.
“Come on.” I patted the back of Gage’s hand. “Let’s get April.”
Funky music emanated from behind April as she answered the door. She’d taken her hair down and it hung in fat, stylish curls. Her brown eyes were outlined with new liner, black this time, and her lashes had been fattened with mascara. Her eyebrows were thinner and sleeker and the skin around them red and rash-y. The pink gloss had been replaced by a plum-colored matte lipstick.
“What’s the matter with your eyebrows?” Gage blurted. “You look like an Angry Bird.”
Her expression fell.
I put a little pressure on his foot.
“Sorry,” he added hastily.
Aside from the ravaged landscape of her upper eyelids, she looked quite glamorous.
“You look amazing,” I told her, wondering if she was trying on a new identity to go along with her new, lower body temperature.
She brightened and went to her closet where she rooted through her clothing. Retrieving a thick wool cardigan and scarf, she wormed her way into the sweater and then looped the scarf around her neck three times. “I got a little overzealous with the tweezers but I wanted to look good in case this is the day my life has changed forever. Brrr.” She gave a visible shiver and rubbed her arms as she snuggled her chin down into her scarf. “I never noticed before but this villa is freezing. Fat lot of good all the fireplaces do.”
Gage and I shared a look of dismay as April grabbed her room key and locked her bedroom door.
“Did you talk to your parents?” I asked as we headed down the corridor to Basil’s office.
“I tried but they didn’t answer. It’s still early. They sometimes turn their ringer off overnight. I’ll try again later.”
As we emerged on the landing, I glanced back and noticed a couple of first-years following us. By the time we arrived at Basil’s office, we had six students whose presence near us could not be a coincidence.
“Oh, is there a lineup?” April asked as we stopped in the small waiting area.
Tomio shifted in his seat and Cecily lowered the book she’d been hiding behind. She had the decency to blush.
“No.” Tomio cleared his throat. “We just wanted to be here for you, April.”
“As support,” Lora said from her perch on the stairs. Lexi nodded her agreement from the step below Lora, eyeballing April like she expected her to sprout fangs.
“Thanks, guys. That’s sweet.” April went to the door and rapped on it.
Dr. Price opened the door and beckoned April inside. I made to follow but hesitated when I caught a glimpse of Basil leaning against his desk. He looked as serious as death. He caught my eye and shook his head.
“Just April, please,” Dr. Price said with a sympathetic look, then shut the door.
Jade appeared from the hallway coming from the ladies block. Without a word, she crossed the waiting area and took the last seat. Since there was nowhere else free to sit, Gage and I leaned against the wall.
Over the next fifteen minutes, five more students from different years appeared, popping up like mushrooms. Even Ryan—whose expression was unreadable—appeared and slid down the wall to sit on the floor on the other side of the landing.
No one said anything aside from the occasional whisper to a neighbor. Every expression was somber, concerned or pinched.
When the door to Basil’s office opened, heads snapped up and spines straightened. Those who were seated on the stairs got to their feet to see better.
April emerged, glowing like a bride. Some of the redness had gone from her eyebrows, her eyes shone with what appeared to be unshed tears of happiness.
Dr. Price and the headmaster followed her from the office, coming to a sudden halt as they noticed the waiting crowd. April’s expression lifted previously dour faces into a state of hope, but my stomach see-sawed down like an autumn leaf. A look like that on April’s face could only mean one thing.
She looked at Basil. “Do you mind if I tell them?”
Basil and Dr. Price shared a bewildered look, but the headmaster replied, “As you wish.” His voice was raspy and tired.
Ryan had gotten to his feet along with the others, gaze skimming the unfolding scene, missing nothing. The slashes of his brows were pinched together.
April turned to the crowd and threw the words like they were confetti. “I’m human!”
Gasps of shock and murmurs of horror swept through the students. Pale faces and wide eyes looked around as disbelief settled over all like a veil of mourning.
“How did this happen?” called Tagan Lyall. A tall, broad-shouldered third-year with a shaved head stood behind him, looking grave.
“It just died. Last night.” April shivered and she glanced at Basil. “You know they have this amazing thing in America called electric heat?”
“It can’t just die,” someone else cried, sounding on the edge of tears.
“That’s impossible,” said Dar. This statement was followed by several sounds of affirmation.
Basil stepped forward. A line of sweat beaded across his upper lip. He put up his hands. “Let’s not overreact. April has generously agreed to meet with the Agency doctors before she goes home. More information will surface.”
This was met with a heavy silence.
“She’s going home?” Gage twined his fingers through mine, squeezing.
“I’m not a mage anymore.” April’s voice was calm and oh-so-reasonable, but her gaze slid to Ryan. She crossed the landing, heading for him.
He watched as she approached, his eyes growing wider the closer she got. She reached out but he stumbled back, out of range of her hands. Though I could only see the side of her face, her posture stiffened.
She forced a laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous, Ryan. It’s not contagious.” There was a pause and April looked back at Dr. Price, her brows drawn. “Is it?”
Christy spread her hands and opened her mouth but it took a long time for her to say, “We don’t know anything, April. This is unprecedented.”
Her words had a remarkable effect. Ryan back-pedaled so fast he crashed into a corner, almost fell, caught himself, turned and vanished down the hall. Everyone else was equally galvanized, scrambling from the stairs and waiting area like a flock of frightened pigeons.
“Honestly.” April watched in amazement as the students fled.
Only Gage, Tomio and I remained, but Tomio looked like he wished he didn’t possess the strength of character that kept his butt glued to his chair.
April put her hands on her hips and turned to those remaining. In that pose and with her hair all fluffy and her makeup piled on thick, she looked like an actress from an eighties’
soap opera.
“What a lot of spineless fools.” She lifted her nose and stalked down the stairs, leaving a cloud of powdery perfume in her wake.
Gage, Tomio and I stood with Basil and Christy in silence. I wanted to ask the headmaster if he was okay, but thought it inappropriate to question our fearless leader in front of other students. He just looked so ill. I thought he’d lost weight too but didn’t know how that was possible. This had happened last night. It had to be stress making his features appear more gaunt than normal.
“The blood test confirmed she’s lost all of her supernatural nature then?” Gage asked, still holding my hand.
Dr. Price nodded. There were dark bruises under her eyes and she looked almost as bad as the headmaster. “I am at a loss to explain it. I’m of half a mind that there is some kind of clever practical joke afoot here, except that the lab test can’t be faked. I took enough blood to run three tests. They all came back negative for all of the markers of our species. She’s as human as human can be. The questions are,” she looked at Basil, “how did it happen, and now what?”
“I’ll have someone from the Agency pick April up this afternoon,” Basil said. “She’s agreed to spend Monday and Tuesday with them, but she is understandably eager to go home. I’ll have Secretary Goshawk reach out to all of our contacts: other schools, agencies and supernatural organizations across the world. Someone might be able to shed some light on the situation. There is little else we can do aside from monitor her and have her report any changes, even after she’s returned home and begun her temporal life.”
“If it had to happen,” I ventured, trying to ease some of the strain, “it’s good that it was April.”
Eyes fell on me as this was absorbed. For most magi, fire being snuffed would be akin to losing a limb or even a loved one. But everyone knew April was different; weaker, less in sync with her fire. She had despised what powers she did have.
“Could it be that she manifested her own destiny?” Tomio’s elbows braced on his knees as he leaned forward. “I never believed her when she complained about being a mage. I thought she was joking about wishing she’d been born normal. But she was obviously telling the truth. Maybe her fire got sick of her hating it and—”
“Committed suicide?” finished Gage.
Tomio nodded, looking dour.
Basil let out a sigh. “At this point we have to acknowledge that anything is possible. I never thought I would live to see the day. I wonder if we’re entering a new age.”
“That’s a little extreme,” I said.
Basil and Christy shared a look that said they knew more than they’d shared.
“What makes you say that?” Gage’s grip on my hand was now uncomfortably tight. I wiggled my fingers to get him to ease up but it didn’t work.
“I’m loath to share this as I don’t wish to frighten people further, so I am relying on your discretion.” Basil looked pointedly at each of us. “I had a report from the agency early this morning that two of our people have also lost their fire. Early examinations likewise point to the loss being permanent.”
My jaw dropped.
“What?” Tomio looked up, eyes huge.
Christy looked like she’d swallowed a sea urchin.
“Agency members?” I squeaked.
April was one thing, agents who’d been through years of training were another. They were professionals, only the finest most capable members of our species were granted the positions they held. Even those at the bottom of the hierarchy had to be exceptional.
Basil nodded. “Our students have families and friends, through them Arcturus has a broad network of supernaturals. If you hear of this happening to anyone else, please tell me immediately.”
He dismissed himself and retreated into his office, for a good long nap on the sofa, I hoped. Dr. Price murmured a goodbye and also vanished, leaving Gage and Tomio and me vibrating with shock.
Fifteen
Humble Jade Pie
I was on my way to the library the next day when Secretary Goshawk’s head appeared from her office. “Saxony?”
Hand on the library door, laptop under my arm I paused. “Yes?”
She emerged, waving me closer. I met her in the middle of the corridor. “The schedule I sent you for this week has been altered slightly. You have a new student as of early this morning. She begged me to let her into your schedule this week, insistent that she couldn’t wait until next.” Goshawk blew out a breath through pursed lips. “I bumped another student for her, with their permission of course.”
“I’ll check my schedule, thanks Secretary Goshawk.”
Once settled at my favorite table in the library, under a window, I took a minute to check the updated calendar Goshawk kept for me before diving into my schoolwork. I read the name of my new student aloud. “Jade Alcott.”
I covered my mouth with a hand to keep in a laugh of surprise, shook my head and put my schedule away. I had dear Betty Boop this afternoon in the fire-gym. This would be interesting.
An hour later and up to my neck in math problems, a tall shadow fell over my desk. I looked up to see Basil standing there. I’d never seen him in the library before and raised my eyebrows with surprise.
His voice was hushed so as not to disturb other students at work. “I’m glad to find you. I was just hoping to remind you to drop the Nero Palumbo report off at my office when you have a chance? Don’t rush, any time this week would be fine.”
I blinked at him, hands frozen over my keyboard. “But, I already gave it back to you—last semester, in fact.”
His expression clouded with self-doubt, which made him look a little daffy. “You did?”
I leaned back in my seat, letting my hands fall into my lap. “Yes, after a skills class in the CTH, before we walked to Professor Palmer’s office. Remember?”
Basil let out a slow sound of realization. “Ah, yes. I’m sorry. Thank you for the reminder. I must have misfiled it, or maybe I left it in Susan’s office.”
“No problem.”
He turned away, looking perplexed. It wasn’t like Basil to be the bumbling professor. He’d always been whip-sharp, organized, and canny. Frowning with concern, I watched him leave the library.
That afternoon, I walked into the fire-gym and spotted Jade’s dark braids as she moved from an observation pod to the stairs. I waited for her in the middle of the gym, wondering how she managed to look contrite and haughty at the same time.
“Hi, Jade.” I paused just outside the honeycomb of equipment that had been set up for students to use as they wished for the next hour and forty-five minutes. It was arranged the way it had been for the first-years skill exam. “I never thought I’d see your name on my schedule.”
“Yeah, well,” she huffed and crossed her arms.
We moved to the clipboard where the equipment in each section was identified. We needed to sign up for the modules we wanted in 15 minute blocks of time.
“What are we working on today?” I took the clipboard down and looked at the layout, picking up the pen that was attached by a string and hovering its tip over the page.
“Pitch,” she said.
I began to register our names next to one of the sections with the right equipment.
“And if there’s time, drawing and detonation.” She twirled a lock of shiny black hair around a finger.
The pen froze as I blinked up at her, then back at the page. Scanning for the right equipment, I scribbled out our names and added them to a different module. “Okay. Looks like ring four will do for all of those skills.”
Jade followed me to ring four. I found the operator’s panel and opened the dashboard that controlled all the equipment in the ring. Punching in the code needed to access the pitch gear, a low hum issued from one of the panels. A vertical door slid up and back, revealing metal spindles.
“Let’s see where you’re at.” I programmed a sequence of six temperatures into the first spindle.
Jade nodded, looking
nervous. She crossed over to the spindles where she wrapped a hand around the first one in the line of five.
Hitting the button to start the sequence I’d programmed, I went over and stood beside Jade as her eyes went soft and unfocused, the spindle under her hand heating up.
“700 Fahrenheit,” she said. Then a moment later: “950 Fahrenheit.”
She went through the full sequence and when she was done, I scratched my head at what I’d noticed.
“Odd, you’re not consistently wrong in the same direction.” Normally, when a mage was off-pitch, they were either consistently too high or consistently too low.
“I know.” She frowned, looking worried. She kept her voice low and looked to the ring’s entrance as though fearful of an eavesdropper. “Is there something wrong with me?”
I wanted to laugh but made my face serious instead; it wouldn’t do if she thought I was making fun of her the first time she’d humbled herself enough to ask for help. “Why would there be something wrong with you? You’re just not great at pitch. Let’s try something different.”
I had her stand between two modules, one for measuring pitch the other for quenching. With her left hand, I had her hold a spindle from the pitch lineup, while with her right she held a spindle from the quench lineup. The quenching spindles could allow heat to be drained out of them, but they could also register the heat being poured into them. The temperature was displayed by a small digital panel above each spindle.
“I’ll program another sequence,” I explained, “this time, don’t tell me what you think the temperature is. Just match it as best you can with your other hand. Got it?”
She nodded, her face tightening with concentration. “Make them match.”
“Close your eyes,” I suggested. “Block out everything else.”
I started the sequence and grabbed the operator’s tablet from under the dashboard. I walked over to join her and watched as the numbers fluctuated on the screen. When the readouts paused, I recorded them in the tablet. As she pushed heat out to match the final temperature in the sequence, I smiled.