by Abbie Lyons
That was definitely interesting. I scanned down my list of classes.
Survey of Human History with Professor J. Lattimore
At least I might be ahead of the curve there.
Remedial Latin with Professor Z. Stultior
Ugh, well that one should be thrilling.
Beginning Pyromancy with Professor T. Lamoureux
Pyromancy like fire? Now we’re talkin’.
Introduction to Combat Skills with Professor N. Kawasaki
Badass.
Theories of Demonological Philosophy with Professor W. Frost
No idea what that’ll entail, but I’m so here for it.
I couldn’t help it. Perhaps a little embarrassingly, I was extremely jazzed about these classes. Sure, as a high-school dropout, it was exciting to see any fancy class list with my name on it. But it was more than that. There had always been a part of me that felt different, like I wasn’t entirely of this world. Professor Lattimore had been right about that—not that I’d ever come even close to imagining the real truth. But seeing my name on that list of classes gave me hope, for the first time ever, that I might be able to figure out my place in the universe. That I could actually learn something and do something useful with my life.
At that, my exhaustion crashed over me like a wave, and I fell dead asleep, still in my leather jacket.
Chapter Five
Morning light streamed through the window—my window—and I blinked to waking. Then I sat up, panicked, heart pounding, until I remembered where I was. Who I was, now.
My room was still empty, so I guess Morgan, whoever she was, wasn’t here yet. So I treated myself to my amazing new bathroom and every last one of my fancy bath products—why the hell not? After blotting my hair dry, I put on the plaid skirt, white button-down, and blue blazer that made up the uniform for girls at Hades Academy. Looking in the bathroom mirror as I freshened up a bit, I couldn’t help but admire myself.
Okay, so you look a little less edgy and a little more preppy, I thought. But damn, you look hot. It was all I could do not to give myself the finger-guns in the mirror.
My good mood didn’t last, though. Because I knew I had to leave my room. And when I finally mustered up the courage to do that, I spent every second walking down that long dormitory corridor trying to psych myself up and maintain my composure. What was I going to do when I got to the common room? Unclear. But the first step was to look like I belonged, because it would not be at all surprising to learn that a big group of demons might see a girl who looks unsure of herself as an easy target. And if I got a reputation for being an easy target—well, I doubted that would be easy to shed. I was not going to be the wounded gazelle.
For some reason, I half-expected every head in the room to turn toward me when I stepped back into the common room sporting my spiffy new Hades Academy Approved look—time slowing down like something out of a movie as everybody looked at the girl who looked like a mess only a few hours earlier.
But nope.
Nobody cared. They were far too preoccupied doing their own thing to pay any mind to a girl walking in wearing the exact same uniform the rest of them had on.
Okay, fine. No attention was better than bad attention. I knew that better than anyone. I plopped down on one of the cozy leather couches and tried my best to look chill. Chill and not too hungry—I was starving, I realized, and I wasn’t about to ask how the demon vending machines worked. No, somebody else was going to have to start a conversation with me, because, despite being confident in my bullshitting skills, I wasn’t feeling great about my ability to start small-talking with fellow students any way other than awkwardly. If my time in foster homes had taught me anything, it was that the less people talked to me, the more they liked me, and vice versa.
So I sat there in relative anonymity, observing, taking in details, just like I did back in the city. After all, anonymity was much better than being the focus of attention. And once I was feeling a little settled, I started to see the crowd in a different light—they were nervous, too. Most of the conversations I was overhearing sounded relatively boring and innocuous.
“Well, my family is originally from Pittsburgh...”
“It’s been so freaking cold this summer...”
“Oh yeah, that place has the best cheeseburgers...”
“I’ve been so bored lately just waiting to come to school...”
It was all, shockingly, mundane. But Dean Harlowe had mentioned that many demons do attend human school for some period of time growing up. Maybe small talk was just as stilted across species.
But then I got that feeling again. There were eyes on me. I already knew whose, but I quickly stole a glance to the side.
Yep, Mr. Red Eyes and his two friends were off in a corner quietly talking to one another, but very obviously looking my way. I might have done a decent job blending in as far as the rest of the students were concerned, but these three knew there was something different about me. I mean, granted, I looked pretty good in my uniform, and my waves were probably extra-voluminous thanks to the demon shampoo, but this was more than that. I felt as if they somehow knew that all of this was still very new for me. But how?
“Hey, pervert, watch where you’re going!” a catty female voice yelled out.
Every conversation in the room ground to a halt. All eyes were trained on a boy standing in the doorway to, as I now knew, the girls’ dormitory. With a moppy head of brown hair and a pair of big black eyeglasses, he fit the description of your classic stereotypical nerd. He wore the same uniform the other boys were wearing, but it was obvious he didn’t quite know how to put on a tie.
The poor bastard. He looked very confused.
“Trying to sneak into the girls’ dorm, huh?” the same bitchy voice called out. It belonged to a pretty blonde sitting in a lounge chair, surrounded by a gaggle of other girls who looked equally snotty.
She had the kind of face that could only be described as elfin, with pale skin and dainty features, and her hair wasn’t so much blonde as it was an unearthly silver-white, falling all the way to her waist with nary a coil of frizz. She was hot shit and she knew it. But more importantly, the vibes I was getting from her were off-the-charts bad.
“I’m so so so so sorry,” said the boy as he pulled the door shut. His face was red with embarrassment. “I didn’t—I was just trying to get into the b-boys’ dormitory! My apologies!”
He began walking back across the common room to the correct dorm, his gaze fixed on the ground. But that vile girl over in the Ye Olde La-Z-Boy wasn’t about to let him get away that easily.
“What’s your name?” she asked. The whole room stayed deathly silent.
“Th-Theodore,” he stuttered. He was frozen in his tracks, still looking down. “Theodore Dewberry. But everybody calls me Teddy.”
The girl rose from her chair and strolled slowly over to him so that they stood toe to toe, though she towered over him.
“Do you like going places you don’t belong, Teddy?” she asked.
“No,” he said meekly. He was still looking down, with the embarrassment that was previously on his face replaced with a look of resigned shame. You had to feel for him. “That was an accident. I’m sorry. I’m in Remedial Latin, you see—”
“An accident? Look at me and tell the truth.” She pulled his chin up with her hand until their eyes were locked. “Let me ask again: do you like going places you don’t belong? Were you trying to catch a look at naked girls, Teddy? Be honest.”
“No!” Teddy’s face flamed. “It was an accident. I wasn’t paying enough attention, and I apologize. I would never want t-to, to s-see—”
“Oh you wouldn’t, would you?” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Do you think I’m pretty, Teddy?”
That had him stumped. Say “yes” and she’d keep calling him a perv, say “no” and he’d be insulting her. There was no way for him to win this stupid game she was playing.
“Just leave him the fuck alone
already! He said it was an accident,” another female voice from somewhere in the room piped up.
Why is everybody looking at me?
Shit, I realized. It was my dumb ass who said that.
Bitchy Blonde whirled around.
“And who might you be?” she asked, voice as cool as poison.
Before I even knew what I was doing, I was up off the couch and walking over toward her.
“Nova Donovan,” I said extending my hand toward hers in a faux show of pleasantry. Obviously, she left me hanging. “Who are you?”
She looked me dead in the eye. “I’m Camilla de Locke. And you’ve just made the biggest mistake of your life talking to me like that.”
Keep calm, Nova. You don’t want to get into a gigantic fight this early on. And you certainly don’t want to accidentally blow up with energy or whatever that was back in the alley.
“Look, I’m not trying to get into some big thing here,” I said. I was talking to her in my best ‘this guy realizes you scammed him and now you need to talk him down so he doesn’t call the cops’ voice. “The kid made a mistake. No reason to torture him over it.”
“No need to torture him?” She gave me a once-over, looking down from my head to my Doc Martens—okay, I was not about to wear the uniform shoes—and sniffed. Literally sniffed. “You’re only half-demon. I can always tell. Probably grew up among humans, too. That’s why you’re so soft.”
I continued doing my best not to get heated, although the nerve this girl—who totally grew up all rich and privileged, who’d never had to dig stale bagels out of a dumpster or sleep in a squat with no heat or running water—had to call me “soft” was not doing me any favors. If this were any other situation, like back on the streets of Brooklyn, I would not have hesitated to kick her ass.
We stared each other down, both of us waiting for the other to escalate things. Either of us could’ve exploded at the other at any moment.
Maybe literally.
That’s when I felt a hand on my shoulder. And then I felt those red eyes.
“I think that’s enough for now, ladies.”
Red Eyes stared at me, his voice low and gravelly, and his eyes not actually red, but the golden color they’d been earlier. Just to the side, his two friends were gently restraining Camilla, who, now that I’d had a moment to cool down, still looked ready to sock me.
Red Eyes turned to address the room. “That goes for everybody, okay?”
“Yes,” said his blonde friend. “Save the fighting bullshit for when Elysium comes to visit.”
There was a smattering of laughter, and Red Eyes glowered with a look that was, I had to think, literally deadly. “Now get to the refectory before the three of us eat all the good stuff.”
At that, almost as if it were a command, students began dispersing down the hall or up into the dorms, chattering away. And had ol’ Red Eyes mentioned eating? Because that I could get behind.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see poor Teddy running off to the boys’ dorm—or, sorry, the Domitorium Viri.
I turned to Red Eyes, wanting to at least say thanks for saving me from a first-day black eye—or worse.
But he’d already brushed away from me.
“Hey,” I said. “Thanks for—”
“Don’t make me do that again,” he said gruffly. “Be a good girl and stay out of trouble, human.”
And that was it. The other two released Camilla, who pouted, but didn’t strike again, and the three guys stalked away and into the hallway.
“That was great,” a female voice said in a husky British accent before I could even formulate a next move. It was a girl, a little shorter than I was, with dark brown hair in a bob and a devil-red lipstick smile. “When you said your name was Nova, I just wanted to shout ‘oy, that’s my roommate!’ but I held back.”
“Uh,” I said. “I guess you’re Morgan.”
“Right-o.” Morgan clicked her tongue. “Don’t worry if you’ve already made a best friend, though. I can tell you and Camilla are gonna be like this.” She held up two crossed fingers.
I snorted. “Yeah, fuck no.”
Morgan flicked a glance back at Camilla and her cronies, then lowered her voice. “The de Lockes have a bad reputation, and she really lives up to it. God, she sucks. I’m glad you just gave it to her.”
“It was the least I could do,” I said. “That kid didn’t deserve any of that.”
“Right?” Morgan cried. “I felt so bad for him! He seems like the nicest kid in the world and she zeroed in on that right away. Demon purists are the worst!”
“Demon purists?” I shouldn’t have been surprised that the new terms kept on coming.
Morgan opened her mouth, then shut it. “Okay, happy to explain, but are you starving? Because I’m starving.”
I had never been more starving in my life. “Totally.”
“Baller.” Morgan jerked her head towards the hall. “Refectory’s this way.”
As we walked down the hall to the refectory—which I guess was fancy demon-school lingo for cafeteria—Morgan chattered away. I wasn’t usually very talkative, but after the run-in with Camilla, I couldn’t have been more grateful for someone to talk to—or, okay, listen to.
“Right, so I’m guessing all of this is very new for you, since you’re, uh...”
“Half-demon,” I said. “Unless that’s a bad thing.”
“Only for demon purists,” Morgan said. “Right, so, demon purist means that not only is Camilla”—it came out Camiller in her accent—”born of 100% demon blood, but she’s never gone to school with humans or lived among them. Most of the rest of us grow up in the human world. We usually get the whole ‘demon talk’ sometime in high school.”
“What, like, your body is changing and all that crap? What did they do, make you watch a film strip about it?”
Morgan chortled. “Right? Nah, it was may more metal than the puberty talk. But people like Camilla—she’s always known what she was. So she’s unusual that way.”
“Yeah,” I told her. “I’m still getting a handle on this stuff. I mean, until, like, twelve hours ago, I didn’t know demons existed, let alone the fact that I was half one.”
We came to the bottom of the Grand Staircase, where Morgan rounded us past a circle of pillars and into a room the size of a small cathedral, complete with stained glass. Except instead of churchy pictures of Adam and Eve or whatever, these windows featured black-winged, fork-tongued hellbeasts breathing fire. Something to stimulate the appetite, I guess.
Broad wooden tables with a handful of chairs spanned the room, with a few two-tops scattered around the edges. But the real feature was, of course, the food: steaming silver platters of every kind of breakfast food imaginable, from tea and crumpets to scallion pancakes to piles of bacon—regular and Canadian—and, thank the demon Gods, urns of what smelled exactly like coffee.
“Help yourself,” Morgan said. “Meet you at a table?”
Professor Lattimore’s meatball sandwich felt like a relic from another time. I grabbed a tray and loaded it down with toast, bacon, at least a pound of scrambled eggs, cut up mango and dragonfruit, some kind of scallion rice porridge, and the largest cup of coffee I could transport without spilling. I wove my way through to a window-side table that Morgan had snagged, hoping she wasn’t one of those girls who ate half a clementine for breakfast and didn’t touch food again until dinner.
She wasn’t. Her tray was just as full as mine.
I plopped down with gratitude and sucked down some coffee. “God, I’m so glad demons believe in caffeine.”
“Are you kidding?” Morgan said, clicking her pewter-colored fingernails against her mug. “The darkest magic of all.”
“Cheers to that,” I said, and clinked my mug against hers. I took another swig and a few bites of food before I took up my line of questioning again.
“So wait, you went to human school for a while but you’re 100% demon?”
“Nah, I just to
ok a DNA test and it turns out I’m 100% that bitch.” Morgan laughed. “Yeah, no, I’m 100% demon. I love human music, though.”
I nodded and stuffed another piece of toast in my mouth. Having food made this whole totally-new-social-context thing go down a lot easier.
“Just wait until you get to dinner,” Morgan said. “It’s legendary. Plus, they serve wine.” She winked.
“Seriously?”
“Hell yeah, dude. A, we’re adults, and B, we’re demons.” Her eyes got wide. “Bloody hell, this is so exciting. I’m gonna be, like, your demon guide,” she said confidently. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know. No question is too dumb. I’ll answer them all. But that’s crazy you just found out, I’ve never heard anything like that before.”
I gulped more coffee, because this conversation wasn’t going to be over anytime soon. “I appreciate that. I’m definitely going to have a lot to learn. Earlier today I was just barely scraping by in Brooklyn and now I’m...here.”
“Oh, cool, Brooklyn!” she gushed. “Never been there, but I’m always hearing about it. I’m from England, of course. If you think this is hell, you haven’t seen Yorkshire.”
Morgan was a bit much, to be sure, but I found myself falling into a good rhythm with her, even while cramming my mouth full of food. I told her my whole story—the short version, at least. She listened with rapt attention when I told her all about being in and out of foster homes and how I survived off my three-card monte scheme.
I left out my mom, at least for now. It was too complicated. Too risky.
“Mate, you are absolutely amazing,” Morgan said, her voice somehow husky and cheery all at once. It would’ve sounded fake coming from someone else, but Morgan was different—this was just who she was. I could tell. “You’re going to be fine here, Nova. I just know it.” She paused. “God, I’m stuffed. Although...” Her eyes drifted towards a platter stacked with chocolate croissants. As I followed her gaze, I caught a flash of something out of the corner of my eye. The three guys—Red Eyes and friends.