Academy of the Forsaken (Cursed Studies Book 2)

by Eva Chase

  His glower darkened. Lying came so naturally to me that I didn’t think most of my classmates had figured out I couldn’t do anything else, but somehow or other Elias had picked up on a pattern that gave it away. Maybe it was thanks to his apparent aptitude for math—whatever aptitude he had when the figures weren’t constantly shifting. Maybe it was because of his leftover pride in his own dedicated if brutal honesty. It didn’t really matter. It was just one more reason for him to think less of me. As if he wasn’t just as fucked up in his own ways.

  “We’re all in an awful situation here,” he said. “No need to make it worse for someone else.”

  “Think of it as me offering an opportunity. Do you think I’d go for it if the staff had ever showed they minded before?”

  His lips pursed in distaste at the implication of how many other times I might have slipped out of chores. As far as I’d been able to tell, the people—if they were people—who ran the college mainly cared about class participation. As long as you turned up for your other duties at the expected time and the tasks all got done one way or another, they didn’t give a shit how you accomplished that.

  “I don’t know what the hell she’s ever seen in you,” Elias muttered, turning away.

  There was no doubt which “she” he meant. After the admissions I’d managed to make to Trix just a couple of hours ago, the jab hit deeper than I should have let it. What the hell did I care what this prick thought of me?

  And yet apparently some part of me did, at least when it came to the girl who’d grabbed both our attentions.

  “What do you figure she’s ever seen in you?” I shot back before I could catch my temper. “Some stuffed-shirt asshole who’d rather stick his self-important nose into other people’s business than tackle his own?”

  Elias’s back went rigid, but he kept walking away, not even dignifying my insult with a backward glance. A trickle of nausea ran through my stomach. I should be better at keeping my cool than that. He wasn’t worth the energy anyway.

  Or maybe he was worth more than I was. Trix had seen something in him, after all. Had still wanted him around now that she had more of her memories. How would she have reacted if she’d seen the exchange we’d just had?

  What would she have thought of my little trick to get out of bathroom-cleaning duty?

  It didn’t matter, I told myself as I stalked away. I was what I was. She could take me like that or leave me. I’d never pretended to be some kind of saint, and hell, the fact that I was here at all must have told her I wasn’t one even before I’d given any hint about my past indiscretions.

  She was probably still out there by the pool setting up her little garden. Trying to grow something in this godforsaken place. The staff would be pissed off if she managed it. I hoped she did if only just to see their reactions.

  I was starting to think she really was going to take them all down in the end. And I—well, I guessed I’d be cheering from the sidelines. The professors had never been particularly won over by my charms, at least partly because they knew perfectly well when I was lying my ass off, and I didn’t have a whole lot to offer in terms of revolutionary skills otherwise.

  A class was just coming out of Composition, the eight students who’d been in there all looking kind of puzzled. I ambled over. One of them was a roommate of mine—Jerome.

  “Hey, man,” I said with a tip of my head toward the classroom. “What’s Hubert got everyone pontificating about now?”

  “She’s getting more convoluted than usual,” he said with a shake of his head. “And she wants us to talk about being happy—how do you figure that? Just sometime when what made us happy screwed over someone else.”

  I might have laughed if my stomach hadn’t been clenched. So, the assignment was basically the entire last ten years of my life. I wouldn’t have any shortage of material. Not that Composition class was ever that hard for me, since I couldn’t confess much of anything in the first place. The trick was always working enough honesty into the false trappings of a story I came up with to convince the professor that I’d put in some effort.

  “Sounds like fun,” I said. “Can’t wait to find out all about it when she lays it on my class tomorrow.”

  “I guess it should be a little interesting seeing what everyone else comes up with,” Jerome said, and pulled a face. “I’m just glad I have a week and a half to figure out mine.”

  As he headed downstairs, the good humor I’d summoned for the conversation faded. I found my gaze sliding back toward the hall to the dorms where Jackman was scrubbing away on my behalf in the bathroom.

  He’d made a commitment to changing his ways since he’d arrived here. I was still the same old guy, wasn’t I? Was the difference that I’d always known I was a fraud and accepted it, and most of the other students had convinced themselves they weren’t really hurting anyone until their flaws were shoved into the light?

  If Trix did somehow break us all out of here… did I really want to stay the same guy I’d been? The guy who’d have flirted with her and cajoled her into bed if she’d been a little less skeptical, who’d have taken off on her as soon as I’d gotten my kicks and never realized what I was missing?

  For fuck’s sake. That jackass Elias had gotten too much into my head. I shifted on my feet with a restless urge and headed up to the dorms. Let’s see if I couldn’t write his crap back out of me.

  When I sat down on my bed with the Composition notebook I’d retrieved from the chest underneath, my stomach clenched tighter. I gripped my pen so hard for a second that I was surprised it didn’t snap.

  Why not write the story of what could have happened with Trix if I’d met her a couple of years ago while I’d still been free? It would be a lie because it wouldn’t really have been her—but also the truth because it’d been a whole lot of other girls I’d used and cast aside.

  I brought the pen to the first blank page. The ink bled a little as I dragged the tip across the paper.

  My senior year in high school, I met a girl who didn’t trust anyone, and I couldn’t resist the challenge. I wanted to get her into bed, and I knew to do that, I’d have to convince her I cared. But I didn’t care about her.

  I paused over the page with the deeper truth behind that statement ringing through me. The truth I’d half-assedly told Trix out by the pool.

  I’d never really cared about anyone, not since the cops had locked Dad away and Mom had disappeared inside the gloom of her mind way back when—not until Trix had come blazing into my life. And if she ever understood just how true that was and how thoughtlessly I’d used so many people around me, she might blaze right back out again in an instant.

  So I’d just have to be better, wouldn’t I? And hope that’d be enough for both me and her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Trix

  There was a stretch of time between dinner and when the lights dimmed to encourage us to turn in for the night, and in that gap I couldn’t do much except wait. Wait to head down to the laundry room when no one would see me to chip away at the wall between the basements. Wait until midnight crept close enough that I could grab some food for Cade and head out for another brief conversation with him.

  Tonight, in the dwindling daylight, I found myself wandering along the stone wall, inspecting the roses I passed. Had any of them crumpled or browned more since I’d last checked on them? Would I find a new one now, one that was tied to my life somehow?

  I couldn’t see any obvious differences, but it’d only been about a week since Elias had first helped me discover the connection between the blooms and every student on campus. A matter of days since I’d found the one tied to my former roommate Delta fallen in dry scattered petals on the ground while her vacant body lay in her bed.

  It looked as though someone had been attempting to tend to the bushes, though. A small pile of food scraps lay at the foot of each stem.

  After I’d spotted several of those piles, continuing on along the sparse edge of the woods, I stoppe
d and nudged one with my toe. The contents appeared to be the remains of some of our recent meals.

  A twig snapped behind me. My head jerked up. Elias was moving between the trees to join me, a mix of hope and anxiety playing across his hard-edged features.

  “I was trying to do some kind of composting,” he said as he reached me. “I suppose I should have talked to you about it first. Laying the food down won’t have hurt the roses, will it?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Honestly, I’m not sure anything natural we do will affect them one way or another at all, since they seem to be living—and dying—off supernatural power. But it can’t hurt.” I should have thought of trying something like that. It’d just seemed so absurd to create a regular compost heap when that would take weeks to produce any useable materials. Elias’s more direct method might do the plants a little good, though.

  I picked up a stick and sifted through the little heap, mixing a bit of dirt in with it. “The scraps will break down faster if you stir them up every few days. You want to be careful not to pile too much in one place at once, too. If we had some proper fertilizer… Hell, if we had proper sun.” I glared up at the clouded sky. “Most roses need a bunch of sunlight to really thrive. I guess that’s proof of supernatural influence right there.”

  “I’ll keep those tips in mind anyway,” Elias said. “Not much point in doing a thing unless you’re doing it as well as you can—even if it might not amount to anything in the end.”

  That wasn’t the kind of attitude I was used to hearing from my classmates or coworkers or even my foster parents back home. Everyone around me had seemed to figure you were best off putting in as little effort as you could get away with toward your goals. But then, Elias had clearly grown up in very different circumstances from me, with much bigger goals.

  “I’ll bring around some water, too,” I said. “That can help with the process. I’ve been watering the bush here and there anyway.”

  “I should have known you’d already have that aspect covered.”

  We studied the dark leaves and the thin spikes of the thorns for a minute in silence. “Do you think you’re making any progress with Professor Hubert?” Elias asked.

  “She’s talking to me a little, and taking my comments into account,” I said. “I don’t know if that’s going to get us anywhere useful in the end either, but—it’s something.”

  “It is. I tried talking to the dean in my capacity as teacher but couldn’t even get my foot in the door.”

  I tapped him teasingly with my elbow. “You’re the one who told me to focus on the easier staff. Dean Wainhouse seems like a pretty tough cookie—he’d have to be if he’s the one in charge of all the others. Why don’t you go after Carmichael?”

  His mouth slanted into a pained smile. “I also believe in focusing on your strengths rather than trying to work through your weaknesses. Warming people up to me clearly isn’t one of my skills.”

  “It’s not really mine either.”

  “Evidence would seem to suggest otherwise.” He looked over at me, his dark brown eyes almost black in the fading light. “You broke through the walls I had up. Twice now. Helped me figure out that there were still ways I could live even though I’m stuck in here. I’d already realized what I’d done wrong, but I didn’t really have a clue how to do anything actually right.”

  His words sent a giddy tingle through me even though I found them hard to believe. “I’m not sure I’ve been doing all that much right either.” And what would this man with his studied control and practicality make of the horrible mistakes I’d made in a rush of reckless emotion?

  “You don’t give in. You ask questions other people are afraid to ask. I don’t think you realize how rare that is here.”

  I gazed back at him, my heart thumping a little faster. Those observations were true, at least.

  “You haven’t given in either,” I had to point out. “You still teach the math class as well as you can even though they’ve made it impossible.” I paused with a sharper prick of curiosity. “Elias, when I confronted you about avoiding me during my last cycle here—you said things had gone wrong with someone I reminded you of. That you were worried the same thing would happen again with me. Was it me you were talking about in the first place?”

  His jaw worked. “There wasn’t any easy way to explain how I could know you and you didn’t—”

  “I understand that. That’s not what I was getting at. Just… what about it did you think went wrong?” None of the bits and pieces of the more distant memories that he featured in came with any sense of anger or betrayal.

  He hesitated for a long moment. Then he said, in a low voice, “I couldn’t offer you much of anything in return. I couldn’t get you out of here. I couldn’t give you your brother back, not the way he used to be. I’m as trapped here as anyone else—a failure like everyone else here. Maybe even more so, because I thought I was some big shot before, and it turns out I was completely wrong. I didn’t want to fail you all over again.”

  My throat constricted. I touched his arm, feeling the bit of warmth that seeped through the sleeve of his suit jacket. “Are you kidding me? You haven’t failed at all. You answered my questions when you felt you could. You showed me the roses; you told me when I could speak to Cade. If I asked you to do something that would help us push back against the staff, even if it was risky, what would you say?”

  “Yes, of course. But I should be able to—I’m supposed to be someone who can lead the way, not who sits around waiting for orders because I can’t figure out what to do with myself.”

  “I think you’ve been leading the way just by surviving here as long as you have. What you’ve done with yourself is refuse to let Roseborne completely break you. That’s why you’re still here. And if you weren’t still here, you wouldn’t be able to help me any way at all.”

  Elias blinked at me as if that line of thinking had never occurred to him. Without warning, he leaned in, his fingers teasing into my hair, and kissed me.

  My fragmented memories contained a few hazy kisses with him—and more. Those vague recollections had nothing on the vivid reality. Even as I sensed he was holding back at least a little, the press of his mouth commanded, the heat of his hand on my waist as he tugged me to him spoke of nothing but total assurance, no matter what his words had conveyed. I held on to him, kissing back instinctively, flooded with a hunger he’d woken up in me.

  It was over sooner than I’d have liked. Elias drew back with a sharp exhalation. He gazed down at me, his lips parting as if he were going to say something, but then he closed his mouth again in a flat line. I’d have thought he was upset that he’d kissed me in the first place if the stroke of his thumb over my hair hadn’t been so affectionate.

  “I’m going to make sure I live up to every part of what you just said,” he murmured finally, and motioned toward the wall. “Helping you take on Roseborne would be a hell of a lot more of an achievement than anything I accomplished out there.”

  I couldn’t resist bobbing up on my toes to steal another kiss. Might as well take what I could get while he wanted this too, a selfish part of me said. But this time the feel of his mouth stirred an uneasy pang alongside my desire.

  “Speaking of accomplishing things,” I said when we eased apart again, “I should get on with my own plans.”

  No one was around on the first floor when I made it back to the school building. I lingered in the sitting room for a few minutes just to be sure none of the staff were wandering around and then slipped down the hall to the basement stairs.

  My tools were where I’d left them last night after my first attack on the wall. I eased the dryer back with a slow but not too loud scraping sound and squeezed behind it. Sitting tucked away in there took me back to my earliest days with Cade, when we used to hide behind the Fricks’ garden shed while our foster father raged. Huddled together with his arm around me and a reassuring murmur in my ear, or me watching him step out and take the
worst of the man’s rage when it’d looked like he might find both of us.

  Now I had to step out to protect him. I hadn’t had many opportunities to repay him in kind over the last twelve years. I picked up the tools with steady hands.

  The hole I’d started carving in the wall there was already a few inches deep, as wide as my shoulders and equally tall. If the wall was only a foot thick, I’d be through it in just two or three more days. Dragging in a breath, I raised the hammer and chisel and got to work chipping more shards away.

  By the time midnight approached, my legs were stiff from the awkward crouch I’d had to stay in and my shoulders ached from driving the chisel, but I’d dug the hole more than twice as deep. The work was going faster now with a little practice under my belt. I pushed the dryer back into place, stashed the tools, and slunk back upstairs to see what I could scrounge up for Cade in the kitchen.

  I couldn’t find much in the way of leftovers. After a few minutes searching, I wrapped up a hunk of cheese and some crackers that’d gone with the soup at dinner, which was the best I could do.

  Outside, the wind had risen, rattling through the tree branches as I ventured into the woods. It whipped my hair against my cheek with a deeper chill than the constant mid-spring air usually held. I walked quickly, not bothering with my phone’s light this time, more comfortable with the route now that I’d taken it the past three nights in a row. I’d wasted too much time in the kitchen, and I didn’t want to lose any more of the precious minutes my foster brother got in human form.

  I still wasn’t quite on time. When I reached our usual spot, Cade was already standing there between the trees. His pale gray eyes fixed on me with even more intensity than usual.

  “There you are,” he said. “Got a little delayed?”

  His tone was light, so maybe it was only my own guilt that sensed a criticism in that question. I held up the bag I’d tossed the crackers and cheese into. “I was trying to find you something decent to eat. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much. I’m sor—”