by Lucy Auburn
I swallow. "I did, I guess. I mean... that's what happened."
I've barely thought about it since, because there were explanations that came easily, ones that had nothing to do with magic. Maybe the crows liked how shiny Wyatt’s head was. Or maybe they enjoyed meddling in human affairs. The guys could've had breadcrumbs in all their pockets.
Anything but admitting that I controlled them. That I probably controlled that black snake too, conjuring it up from whatever cool riverbank it was sleeping beside and drawing it to Herb's house, where it temporarily sent the investigation in a direction that didn't involve looking into me.
I've always had a lowercase affinity for animals. When I first got together with Jack, he told me he was going to get me what I'd always wanted: a puppy. In the end, that didn't pan out, and I wound up being glad for it. I didn't want another living thing having to spend time under the same roof as him, at the mercy of his whims. Then again, maybe he would've loved a dog all the time, and not just some of the time like with me.
Instructor Abarra paces over to the large cabinet against the wall, catching my attention. "I suppose if we're going to test your Emotional Affinity, and suspect it has something to do with animals, that means we'll be needing these."
One by one she pulls cages out of the deep cabinet. There are mice, hamsters, even a little bird inside, all of which make noise as she sets them down against the target wall. My stomach does a funny flip at the sight of them; whatever they do with those animals in here, it can't be good. I don't know why that bothers me more than the thought of some dictator getting whacked or a CEO taken out, but it does. The animals haven't done anything to deserve this.
"Why don't they make noise inside the cabinet?" I wonder aloud, as Koda gets more and more of them out.
"A spell," Wyatt answers, his voice soft and easy. "There's a spell on the cabinet that keeps them quiet."
I stare up at him, marveling with my mouth open. "That's the longest sentence you've ever said to me without stuttering!"
He considers it, and a grin blooms across his face. We share a brief look of happiness, one that's spoiled by what Instructor Abarra brings out of the cabinet next.
There's a cat in one of the cages.
A beautiful pale white siamese with a seal point face and dainty paws, its eyes a startling blue. It hisses and scratches at Abbara's fingers as she hastily sets it down, grimacing.
At my expression—which must be horrified—she sighs. "The cat bit a... most particular Shadow Fold assassin. This was the most humane option out of the ones he offered for dealing with it."
That's all it takes, apparently, to be sentenced to a cage and stuffed into a dark closet. I feel terribly for the cat—and almost as terribly for the little green snake that's pulled out next, its scales dull and its movements sluggish, clearly lacking a heat lamp. The animals that wind up here aren't meant to last, apparently, and no wonder if someone like Levi or Grayson is meant to practice their powers on them.
"It isn't fair," I murmur, and Wyatt squeezes my hand sympathetically. Looking up at him, I feel a wisp of the conspiratorial coming on, the way I felt when Jack and I were in college and we'd drive out to the coast at night, running through the dark waves and yelling at the sky with joyous wonder. "They should be free. Maybe we can do that for them. She can't put them all back in the cage at once, can she? Will you help me?"
He nods, seemingly uninterested in speaking another sentence after the last perfect one came out with such ease. I don't blame him; it's hard to imagine what it must be like to have trouble communicating. His strength is a harsh tradeoff for losing so much.
With his hand on mine, I watch, heart in my throat, as Instructor Abarra places the last of the cages against the wall. Pacing back towards her spot observing the center of the training gym, she puts the woolen ball in her palm and nods sharply to me.
"You may begin."
I take in all the cages, overwhelmed. Half the animals are predators for the other half; letting them all out together seems like a bad idea. There are birds, three snakes, rodents galore, the cat, and one lonesome ferret curled up in a ball. None of them look to be in the best shape, though the rats and mice at least are well-fed.
"How did these animals come to be here?" Instructor Abarra raises a brow at me. "I mean, if I'm going to figure out my Emotional Class powers, maybe it helps to know why they all look so... depressed."
It's as good an excuse to give as any. "The mice and rats are what we use when a student needs to practice their powers on a living thing but we can't risk a human life. They're kept in the laboratory at night and rotated out. The rest... pets students left behind, and a few strays that followed instructors here. I believe the ferret came in through an open grate."
So the rodents, at least, live a relatively easy life, in between being experimented on. I don't know if that makes things better or worse. I worry that if I free them along with the snakes and the cat, they won't be around for long.
I have no idea where all these animals are going to go once they're free, or how I'll get them out of their cages. Wyatt squeezes my hand, though, and I look up into his face. Something about his sure and steady expression makes me believe in myself.
"Let's do this."
Chapter 20
I start by pushing my awareness outwards, the way I did in the woods without even realizing it, the day I ran from the Fuckfaces and straight into more trouble. It feels like that was weeks ago, but it's barely been three days—proof that time moves far more slowly here beyond the golden doors.
Bit by bit, I feel the little balls of emotional energy that are the animals. Most of the rodents are just vaguely hungry, curious, and cold, longing for the laboratory where their cages are left under heat lamps and they get to eat to their heart's content. None of them much like being here; there are vague, older sense memories of their hearts racing and little feet running in vain as they tried to escape the pain of being practiced on.
I move on to the birds, because the confusion in the tiny rodents' brains is dragging me down. Unlike the mice and rats, they have some general sense of what's going on, mostly because they've lived longer lives. There's a heaviness to their hearts, a depression that makes them not want to groom themselves or even try to fly away.
The snakes, on the other hand, feel mostly cold and resentful. Flicking out their tongues to taste the air, they sense warm-blooded prey nearby, and are frustrated by their inability to get out and eat. One of them has ceased to move, waiting for the inevitable to end. It remembers, most of all, what it was like to be free, and if it can't slither through dark places or sun itself on a warm rock, it doesn't want to live at all.
When I brush against the cat's mind, I expect the same kind of depression or sadness, maybe hunger and despair. But all I get is a constant pulse of rage, the kind of anger that makes her want to scratch and bite and kick her way out of the grip of any human hands that dare grab her and hold her tight. She remembers what it was like to curl up on warm laps and eat delicious food; she's angry that she can't jump or stretch or seek warmth inside her cage.
Sometimes at night, the man in charge of the laboratory lets her out, but he's stopped doing that lately. From my human point of view, I can figure out pretty easily why: the last few times he opened the laboratory door in the morning, she streaked out between his feet, running for freedom. The chase she gave around the university halls and into the courtyard was enough to leave him panting, and when he picked her up to carry her back to his cage, she sunk her teeth into him so deeply that she can still remember the taste of his blood. Needless to say, he hasn't given her freedom yet.
She blinks, her emotions changing as she somehow senses my presence. Like the crows in the forest, the cat has a mind that's capable of communicating with me, and not just feeling generally in my direction. Her eyes blink slowly, and she stares at me, curiosity replacing the all-consuming anger that's driven her. Her ears prick up as she leans forward and sniffs the
air, one paw reaching up to test the bars of her cage. A tiny, plaintive meow leaves her little throat, as dainty and soft as she is.
My heart does something it hasn't in a long time: it gives itself over, and I fall completely, totally, in love.
There's no way in hell that this day ends with that cat in a cage. She deserves to be free. They all deserve freedom, though I don't think I can free the rodents just yet, at least not without risking their lives. At least they seem happy enough in the laboratory, and prone to forgetting the worst parts of their lives, which are mostly a haze. The cat remembers all of it, and she suffers for what they've done to her, all because no one understood her.
She's not just a pet. She's a killer, like me, and everyone else here. She lives to stalk and chase and murder. When denied her instincts by her former owner, she went mad and started chasing and biting the hem of his robe. When he scruffed her in anger, choking the skin on the back of her neck until she could barely breathe, she started to bite him too.
In a way, we're two of the same. If she were big enough, she would've chopped him into little pieces, just like I did to Jack. There's no way in fuck I'm not giving her the same thing I earned for myself with blood and sacrifice: the freedom to bite whomever the fuck she wants, whenever she wants to bite them.
Expanding my awareness, I let my mind touch the cat, the snakes, the birds, and the little lonesome ferret, who barely stirs as I reach for him. In a voice that's all emotion, I call for them to rise up. I urge them forward. And I show them what to do.
It's the clever little cat who gets it first. Paw slipping between the wire bars of her cage, she bats at the latch keeping her in and slides it over. Then she pushes her head against the door, slipping out like it's nothing.
I glance over at Instructor Abarra, who's watching her little woolen ball. Licking my lips, I urge the cat to move quickly, and to her credit she does—not because she wants to obey me or please me, but simply because she knows what we're going to do together will sow chaos, and causing mischief is the one thing she enjoys more than hunting prey.
Cage by cage, she slips the doors open, but I urge the animals to stay inside. By the time Instructor Abarra looks up with a frown, the cat is back in her wire cage—and she's none the wiser.
I hear a cough from behind me, but Wyatt looks over his shoulder with a silencing glare. If Grayson or one of the other Fuckfaces is considering selling me out, he's not letting them. We both want these animals to be free. And somehow I doubt keeping them caged is something the guys want desperately enough to rat me out.
Taking a deep breath, I decide it's now or never. Grasping ahold of the emotional energy of every single one of the animals, I tell them to go, run, as fast as you can, slither and fly, leap and spin, slip between the cracks and the open windows.
Then I raise my hand, and try to think of my Physical Affinity not as a force field but as a drifting breeze. When I was first in Headmaster Shu's office, I used my powers to raise every single weapon off the wall and float them in the air, but I didn't do it consciously. All it took was my anger to fuel my powers, and that's what I feel now when I think about the lives of those animals in captivity, caged as surely as I was in prison. The pulse of my rage fuels my powers, giving them shape and form, flowing with my intentions.
With a bang the windows to the courtyard fly open, and Instructor Abarra whirls, mouth agape as the birds swoop through them and into the open air. Before she can do anything to stop me, I spin on my heel, still holding Wyatt's hand, and jerk open the door to the gym. Three snakes, two green and one an alabaster white, slither through the open door—followed by the playful run of a cat leaping over their forms and out into the hallway, never to be seen again.
She doesn't look back at me even once. Ridiculously, a little part of my heart goes with the little cat. I barely know her at all, but I feel like I was meant to free her, if nothing else.
When I turn away from the door, smug and satisfied, Instructor Abarra is grimacing directly at me. "There will be consequences for this," she says. "Headmaster Shu isn't fond of students who break the rules."
"Send me to her office, then." I put my shoulders back and release Wyatt's hand, face heating at the triumphant grin he shoots my way. For his sake, I tell the instructor, "This was all my idea, and I'm more than prepared to face the consequences."
"This is your target." Of all the things I expected the headmaster to do in response to my rebellion—give me extra homework, take marks off my grade, tell me they've invented a graduate program level detention just for me—this was the last I could've imagined. "Her name is Delia Reynolds, twenty-two. She works at a laboratory in St. Louis, Missouri, and has just discovered a new biological weapon. If she's allowed to live, the whole world will be in jeopardy."
I stare down at the photograph the headmaster has put in front of me. "She's wearing a paisley dress."
"Yes, well." She waves her hand in the air dismissively. "Evil doesn't look a certain way."
"You're telling me I'm supposed to kill this woman? Just like that? They did tell you that I never showed up to any of my classes today, right?"
"Another misuse of your time here." She scowls at me, then fishes a flask out of her desk and drinks from it. There's already a flask on top of her desk, tipped on its side and empty, but I keep my mouth shut instead of mentioning that. "You're not supposed to kill Delia. Just surveil her. If she's up to what we think she is, then you'll come back here and apply for a Mark. She'll be your first university-granted kill. Maybe field work will make you understand that we have rules here for a reason."
Swallowing, I point out resentfully, "All I did was let a few poor animals out of their cages. And I left the rodents behind—there are still plenty to perform experiments on."
"This isn't just about that." The headmaster looks at me coolly. "We know about your attempt to run away the night before your initiation."
Grayson. Of course. But then she goes on to add, "Multiple students came to us about it. Apparently you caused quite a stir. This place isn't easy, Ms. Arizona, but neither is it optional for people like you. Your first kill woke something in you: four Affinities, and the desire to kill more. Either you stay here, or—"
"You take me out for the better of the world or whatever. I get it already. Stop using euphemisms and just threaten to kill me directly."
For a moment I think I've put my foot in my mouth so thoroughly that Eve is probably somewhere across the world groaning, but then a shadow of a smile curls up the headmaster's lips, and she chuckles.
"Very well then. Go on surveillance, find out what this Delia Reynolds is up to, or I'll chop off your head. That clear enough for you?"
"Crystal."
She adds, as if an afterthought, "Oh, and make sure you bring your Conduits. Instructor Abarra told me that today's little show, if nothing else, proved that Wyatt Brown is definitely one of them. So is Grayson Hughes, even if your Spiritual Class Affinity has proven to be less robust than I had hoped. Take this file and bring it to Mr. Hughes for further instruction. They'll help you hunt down this Delia and interrogate her if you must—all from the shadows, of course, as are all things we do. You are dismissed."
As I leave her office, I pass by the portrait of Vincent Arizona, and find myself staring at it with my fists clenched.
He's the reason why I'm here. Why I am the way that I am: a killer. He passed down these powers to me, and didn't even bother to leave me an instruction manual so I could better understand them.
If he weren't dead, I'd kill him.
Of course that makes no sense.
Huffing out a frustrated breath, I stare down at the file Headmaster Shu gave me, my mind churning. She can give me an assignment if she wants—I am, ostensibly, here for my Master's Degree in Killing, after all—but no one said I have to follow it exactly as she says.
There's no way I'm taking those Fuckfaces with me, especially now that I know at least one, if not all, of them ratted me out.
If I'm going to be a killer, I'll do it on my own terms, my own way. I've had enough of following other people's rules and orders. It's time to start doing this the Ellen Arizona way.
I'm going through those doors on my own, come Hell or high water, and no one is gonna stop me.
Chapter 21
Standing at the end of the driveway, I glare at absolutely fucking nothing. The doors aren't technically here for me to be mad at, but that doesn't stop me from narrowing my eyes in irrational rage, absolutely certain they're fucking with me.
I've got the file on Delia Reynolds in one hand, my great-great-grandfather's hunting knife in the other, and one of Eve's short swords strapped to my back. The point of the sword is digging into my left ass cheek, making me list over to one side in discomfort—it turns out that just because you've enrolled in a graduate program for the killing arts, doesn't mean that you know what you're doing. Especially if you don't go to classes, like me.
Who knew? That part of the learning process isn't optional.
Sighing, I pull the leather strap of the sword sheath over my head and shoulder, then clutch it in my left hand, shoving the file under my armpit. It's not exactly elegant, and I'm more likely to poke myself with the sharp part than kill someone with it, but I feel better having it. My powers aren't something I feel like I can rely on entirely. Sure, they've come somewhat naturally to me—at least, one out of four has; the others seem to flare to life the most when I'm angry or holding a Fuckface's hand—but I have no idea what'll happen to me in a fight.
It still irritates the shit out of me that I couldn't kill things with the palm of my hands back when Jack was being such a dick. The fact that I had to kill him to activate them, had to bathe in blood and know horrible things, seems vastly unfair. They also would've come in handy the night Mom died, but apparently supernatural powers don't like to evolve on a convenient timeline. Mine are cursed with being tied to the presence of four vexing men.