by Alexis Davie
“What the—?” Aubrey pulled the phone back from her ear and stared at the display. She checked to make sure that she hadn’t added any other digit accidentally while making the call, and it didn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary. It was just Chelsea’s number as Aubrey had called it thousands of times before.
She dialed the number again.
“We’re sorry,” she heard the woman’s voice say again. “Your call cannot be completed.”
Aubrey hung up before the recorded message was finished. She looked around, checking that her friends hadn’t popped their heads out of their hiding places. There still seemed to be no one anywhere near her.
Since Chelsea’s number wasn’t working, Aubrey decided to try Dana’s next. Maybe Chelsea had turned off her phone, though the message would simply say that the number was occupied or turned off, not that it wasn’t a working number. Maybe the cell towers had gone haywire for a little while, and now they were back to functioning properly.
Aubrey dialed Dana and moved to the bushes closest to her, where she imagined one of her friends could’ve hidden in the few seconds she had gotten caught up with the sparkle thingies. There was nothing hiding behind the bushes, not even a worm or a cockroach or even a rat. It also looked… surprisingly clean for being the ground of Central Park.
“We’re sorry, your call cannot be completed. The number—”
“What the hell!” Aubrey tried calling Savannah, because surely it wasn’t possible that all three of their numbers were somehow blocked or unreachable.
Please, come on, come on, Aubrey prayed, the fingers of her other hand nervously tapping against her purse. The line started ringing, giving her hope that the call would connect this time and she’d be able to chew Savannah out for scaring her like this, only to suddenly change into the same recorded message telling her that her call could not be completed.
“Oh, screw you!” Aubrey yelled, furiously waving her phone around in her hand since she couldn’t just throw it and let it smash into pieces. She couldn’t reach any of her friends, and they all seemed to have vanished into thin air, leaving no trace as to where they might have gone. She was starting to think that this was another level of pranking her, much bigger and worse than just throwing her into her parents’ backyard pool.
“Okay, guys, seriously!” Aubrey cried, frantically looking behind every bush and tree on her path. “Where are you? This is a really mean prank you’re all pulling on me! I don’t want to be the boring one, but please, stop it! Just come out of wherever you’re hiding!”
She received absolutely no response.
Okay. Aubrey took a deep breath to calm down. She was starting to freak out, and freaking out would lead her to make rash and stupid decisions. She needed to clear her head and look for another way to contact her friends. Perhaps they had simply gone ahead of her? It was possible that they hadn’t noticed she had stayed behind and had kept going, but wouldn’t they have realized at some point that Aubrey was no longer following them? Besides, Aubrey didn’t think she had been staring at the strange sparkles for that long.
There was, most likely, a perfectly logical explanation for why she couldn’t call or find any of her friends, and if she calmed down enough to think rationally, she would come up with—
Something hit her arm and shoulder with such strength that she almost went down to the ground before that same something caught her, stopping her from falling.
“Oh, crap, I’m so sorry!” said a female voice. Aubrey opened her eyes and saw a young woman holding her arm with both hands. She was taller than Aubrey by almost a head, with long black hair and pale skin—much paler than Aubrey had ever seen on anyone. “Are you okay?” the young woman asked. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you at all!”
“No, no, it’s okay,” Aubrey said. The young woman’s hands on her arm felt really cold, like she’d been holding a freezing can of soda and her regular body temperature hadn’t kicked in yet. “I—I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you either.” She had kind of popped out of nowhere. Aubrey had been standing on the main path of Central Park by herself, and this young woman had apparently not seen her?
“Still, sorry! I’m glad you’re not hurt, though!” the woman said, letting go of Aubrey. “I gotta go to class, so I gotta run! But I’ll see you later, yeah?”
Class? Aubrey frowned to herself. Sure, it wasn’t the weekend, but she knew they were in the summer period of vacations before school picked up again in the early fall, so what class was this young woman going to? Not that it was any of Aubrey’s business.
When the woman pulled away from her, presumably to go to whatever class she had to get to, Aubrey noticed that she was wearing flats, jeans, and a short-sleeved gray shirt with the letters EMU written on it, along with several messages written in what Aubrey could only guess was black sharpie. She also had a backpack slung over her shoulder.
“W-wait!” Aubrey called out to the woman before she ran off. “I’m sorry, I know I’m a complete stranger, but may I use your phone? I’ve been trying to call my friends, but none of my calls have connected!”
“Oh! Yeah, sure!” The woman pulled her phone out of the pocket of her jeans and handed it to Aubrey, who dialed Chelsea’s number and prayed that the call would go through.
“We’re sorry, your call cannot be comple—”
“Oh, my god!” Aubrey gripped the phone in her hand tighter, aware that she couldn’t break it (and even if she could, she shouldn’t, since it wasn’t hers), and stared at the screen, enraged. “You stupid piece of junk! Why aren’t you working?! Why can I not make any damn phone calls?!”
The young woman looked at the display and raised an eyebrow. “You forgot to add the two pluses.”
Aubrey turned to her so fast, she thought she’d get whiplash. “The two what?”
“The two pluses,” said the woman. “You’re calling a mortal number, right? You need to add the two pluses while you’re near the campus. Otherwise, it’s like the number doesn’t exist.”
Aubrey knew that the woman had spoken in very clear sentences, and yet she didn’t understand what any of them had meant. Two pluses? A ‘mortal’ number? Near the campus? What was a ‘mortal’ number, why did she have to add two pluses to it, and what campus were they close to?
“That’s so cool that you have mortal friends, though,” the woman went on, taking her phone from Aubrey’s open palm. “I don’t know a lot of people who do. Must be really interesting, huh?”
“I…” Aubrey was at a complete loss of what to say. She was still trying to wrap her mind around the questions she couldn’t make herself ask out loud.
“Oh, crap, I’ve really gotta run now!” The young woman waved goodbye at Aubrey with a warm smile and ran off in the opposite direction Aubrey had been heading, which made her turn around. “I hope you can call your friends! Good luck!”
Aubrey appreciated the sentiment, but the woman’s parting words were not what she was paying attention to. What had grabbed her attention was the enormous stone archway about half a mile away with elegant black letters engraved on it. She walked toward it, staring at the letters as if she were hypnotized.
What the ever-living hell is this? she thought. Has this always been here? No, it can’t have been! I know Central Park, and I know this was not here before! Or… was it?
Around her, she heard the sounds of people walking and talking amongst themselves, and she saw that most of them were wearing some item of clothing with EMU on it, above a logo that she didn’t recognize. It seemed to be some sort of crown with what looked like wands around it, but she couldn’t be sure. Everyone was moving past her so quickly that she had no time to get a closer look.
The less distance there was between herself and the stone archway, the clearer the letters engraved on it became until Aubrey was standing right in front of the building’s entrance.
“Elite Magic University,” she read out loud, and as soon as she did, she felt like she was out of breath, as if someone h
ad reached into her chest and squeezed her heart. She could swear she was hearing her own heartbeat in her ears, thumping loudly, making her entire body vibrate with it.
Her feet started moving forward of their own volition, without any conscious input from Aubrey, and although she had a few objections to walking into a building that, to her knowledge, had not even existed as recently as a week ago, she didn’t try to move her feet in the opposite direction.
Maybe someone will be able to explain what the hell is going on, she told herself, making excuses for this irrational, possibly even dangerous decision to the rational part of her.
But it was more than just a rushed, stupid, inconsiderate decision. It was a gut feeling, like the one she’d had this morning about her day not going at all according to plan, except this time, it was telling her that walking through the archway before her would give her all the answers she was looking for, even to questions she didn’t know she had yet.
Well, Aubrey thought with a sigh. Here goes nothing, I guess.
---
What awaited Aubrey on the other side of the Elite Magic University archway entrance was something she had not, by any means, been prepared for: it was an entire college campus, with buildings scattered throughout a giant area that reached far beyond what Aubrey could see. Several stone paths across the grassy field led to the different buildings, and people walked through those paths to their destination. Some people were sitting in circles on the grass, talking, joking around, listening to someone badly play a guitar or any other instrument that could be carried around.
“What in the world—?” Aubrey muttered under her breath. What was this college campus doing here? Since when had it been here, and how could she not have noticed it? The name didn’t sound familiar either. She couldn’t remember a single person who had ever mentioned it or said they had attended it or knew someone who had.
The place seemed to be too big to have been built without anyone noticing. The décor appeared almost otherworldly, like old ruins that had lasted centuries, even millennia, though Aubrey supposed that could simply be an aesthetic choice.
A young man walked past her, and Aubrey reached out to tap him on the shoulder.
“Excuse me!” The young man stopped and turned back to her. “I-I’m sorry, but… can you tell me how long this has been here?”
“What, the Economics building?” He looked at the closest building to Aubrey’s left. “Not that long, maybe twenty or thirty years?”
And that’s not a long time? Aubrey thought, but she didn’t say this out loud. “No, I—I meant the whole thing, like, all of it.”
“The whole campus?” asked the man, raising an eyebrow. He was wearing a varsity jacket with the letters EMU on his left and the letters EDT. Underneath the latter, in smaller letters, was written ‘ELITE’S DRAGON TEAM’. Was that a sports team on the campus? Aubrey didn’t think she’d ever known any sports team whose mascot was a dragon. Then again, she didn’t know all that much about sports in the first place.
“Probably like three thousand years,” the young man answered. “Four? God, I always get the dates mixed up…”
Aubrey felt like her jaw would hit the floor.
“Four thousand years?” she repeated, her voice much higher pitched than it usually was. That was impossible; no university in the history of the world had been around for that long. Not any that was still standing and operating, at the very least, she was absolutely sure of it!
“Give or take. I think.” He saw Aubrey’s shocked expression and let out a small snort. “I know,” said the young man, rolling his eyes. “You’d expect this place to be much older than that with how old-fashioned some of the professors are, right?”
“Daxton!” A group of four guys, all wearing varsity jackets like the young man Aubrey had been talking to—Daxton, she guessed—surrounded him and began to tug him forward, away from Aubrey. “Dude, c’mon, we’re gonna be late for Erik’s party!”
Daxton allowed himself to be led away without looking back. Aubrey noticed that many groups of people were moving in the same direction as the members of the sports team, most likely to get to the party they had mentioned. Aubrey assumed that, since this was a campus, surely there must be fraternities and sororities, as well as dorm buildings for first-year students. Perhaps this party was going to be at one of these fraternities, and that was where they were headed.
I should really try getting out of here, Aubrey thought. She took out her phone and stared at Chelsea’s number on her contacts. The young woman she had encountered had told her that she needed to add two pluses, even though that made absolutely no sense at all. But it was the only thing Aubrey had at the moment, and she wouldn’t know whether it worked or not if she didn’t at least try it.
Aubrey dialed two plus signs, followed by Chelsea’s number, and put the phone to her ear. To her surprise, the line started ringing instead of immediately telling her that her call couldn’t be completed, and Aubrey crossed her fingers, not wanting to jinx it.
Oh, please, please, let this go through, let this go through, she prayed. After a few more rings, she heard the call connect.
“Aubrey?!” came Chelsea’s voice. “Aubrey, oh, my god, what the hell! We lost track of you and then we couldn’t find you! If you were going to ditch us, you could’ve at least told us!”
“What? Chels, I didn’t ditch you!” Aubrey replied. “I turned around for three seconds, and then you guys were gone!”
“Okay, look, we can talk about this later, all right? You just—” Chelsea let out a sigh on the other end of the line. “You scared the crap out of us! Where are you? Are you still in Central Park?
“I…” Aubrey looked around. “I think? I don’t know, there’s this weird college campus that I didn’t even know existed—”
“A college cam… are you talk… Aubrey?”
“Chels?” Aubrey pulled her phone away from her ear to look at the screen for a second. The display showed her that the call was still going, but she could barely hear Chelsea on the other end. “Chelsea?”
“We… get you… right?”
“Chelsea?” Before Aubrey could try to keep the conversation going, the line abruptly cut off, and the next thing she heard was an automated voice in her ear saying, “We’re sorry, the number you have called cannot be reached. Please try again later.”
“Son of a bitch!” Aubrey barely held herself back from throwing her phone against the ground. She knew it—she knew that her gut feeling was right, that this day would go from bad to worse, but she had wanted to believe that she was exaggerating, that she could defy that gut feeling and actually make her twenty-first birthday a good day.
Well, if that gut feeling had been right, it meant that the second gut feeling she’d had would also be right. This place, against all of Aubrey’s expectations, held answers, and right now, that was what Aubrey needed the most.
Daxton’s friends had mentioned a party, right? A fraternity party would probably include the majority of the campus population, which meant that there would be at least several people who could help her out. At this point, Aubrey had nothing left to lose, so she figured she might as well try.
She ran to catch up with the varsity sports team and followed them at a proper distance, hoping that they would lead her to the solution to her problems.
3
Erik was having a phenomenal birthday. Not that he had imagined it would be anything less, of course, but it was still good to know that his expectations had been met. His fraternity brothers had really pulled off the greatest party Elite Magic University had ever had, and it was only fitting that it would be for the Dragon Prince.
It seemed like almost the entire campus was present and accounted for, including most of the other fraternities and sororities. Erik thought he saw a vampire here, a wolf shifter there, and even some fae folks, although he would probably do well to stay away from them. His father had always warned him not to get too close to them, and even if Er
ik had his disagreements with the Dragon King, keeping his distance from the fae was not one of them.
“Hey, prince boy!” Erik glanced at the entrance of the Dragon Fraternity and watched his best friend, Daxton, and a few other football players stride into the building, mixing themselves with the rest of the partygoers.
“Dax!” Erik greeted him, pulling him into a headlock. “You giant ass, I thought you weren’t gonna show up!”
“Yeah, and miss your first quarter of a century? Not a chance!” Daxton said, his voice slightly strained because of the headlock. He tried to get out of it, but Erik had a firm grip around him. “Whoa, hey, dude, have you been working out?” Daxton rasped.
Erik had, yes, because it would just be shameful if the Dragon Prince wasn’t one of the strongest—if not the strongest—dragon students in the university, but honestly, part of his strength came from both simply being a dragon and from his genetics. His family had always had strong dragons in it, and he had been lucky enough to inherit some of his ancestors’ best genes.
“Have you been slacking off, Dax?” Erik teased his best friend. “You used to be able to get out of this no problem!”
Some of the other dragons around them started to whistle and whoop loudly, until Erik decided to have pity on Daxton and let him go. He’d just have to push his friend to go a little harder on the weights and on his regular workout regimen, or they’d lose the next game against the wolf shifters, and Erik would be damned if the wolves defeated them and screwed up his perfect record.
“So, Erik,” said another of his fellow dragons, Chad. “How does it feel to be twenty-five?”
Erik shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing out of the ordinary so far. A year closer to stopping aging.”
As a magic being, when he turned 28, he would stop aging forever, effectively making him immortal. He could still die, but it wouldn’t be because of natural causes or a disease or anything that wasn’t specifically designed to kill him. Most magic beings that had never met him or the Dragon King often confused them for brothers, though they always correctly assumed that his father was older because of the regal air he carried, something Erik knew without a doubt he would also carry when it was his turn to become king.