Academy of the Forsaken (Cursed Studies Book 2)

by Eva Chase

  The room I found on the other side definitely wasn’t the sort of space I could picture a person living in. It was small and stuffy, with bookcases along one wall and a wooden desk with a single chair on the far side. Hubert didn’t bother to sit down, just leaned against the front of her desk, so I had nothing to do but stand awkwardly in front of her.

  “I found Violet down by the wall around campus,” I said, letting the words spill out urgently so any holes in my story would sound more like I was flustered than I was leaving things out. “She’d fainted or something—she seemed really weak. I don’t even know what she was doing out there. It looked like she was trying to replant one of the roses off the bush?”

  Hubert regarded me, coolly contemplative. “And you left her there?”

  “No,” I said. “I managed to wake her up a little and help her get back to the school. She’s resting in the sitting room right now. But I don’t know if she’s sick or something. It looks pretty serious. Maybe she should see an actual doctor?”

  For a moment, silence hung between us. Hubert’s eyes had widened slightly. “Have you gotten particularly close with Miss Droz?” she asked. “You seem very invested in her well-being.”

  I blinked at her. “If I see someone who’s obviously in trouble, of course I’m going to try to help.”

  “Perhaps you wouldn’t feel that way if you knew how much trouble that girl brought on others of her own volition.”

  Was she seriously suggesting that I should have left Violet to die because of her past? Well, yeah, that actually did seem to fit with the staff’s usual attitudes.

  I folded my arms over my chest. “I know about the bomb. She told me. It was a shitty thing to do, but that doesn’t mean I want to see her suffering. Anyway, that’s not the point. Are you going to make sure she’s okay or what?”

  The professor’s gaze had slid away from me. She was looking toward the bookshelves, which held a few framed photographs in front of the rows of books. A couple of them black and white, the other two sepia toned—scenes from around the school, I realized when I studied them. They would have fit in with the pictures in the yearbook I’d found, except I didn’t recognize any of them from those pages.

  The same boy featured in three of them. The malnourished-looking boy with the tufts of pale hair who was missing from the portraits: Winston Baker. In one, he stood at the edge of the frame, looking toward students sprawled around the swimming pool. In another, he and a different boy braced themselves on the badminton court, their expressions grim. In the third, he was sitting at a cafeteria table, with—

  “Love or selfishness,” Professor Hubert murmured, so quietly I barely made out the words, her eyes still fixed on the photographs. “Has that always been the key?”

  I was still looking at the picture of the boy in the cafeteria. Looking, and then tumbling through my mind into the vague impression of a seat, chatter carrying around me, a meaty smell hanging in the air. My ribs hurt—someone had kicked me in them—and my fingers clenched around…

  Around a gold pocket watch etched with a distinctive pattern of whorls and lines that came together into a tree.

  The sight, momentarily crystal clear, jolted me back to the present. The watch was right there in the photograph, half hidden by the boy’s hand, but the etching on it was visible enough for me to know it was the same as on my mother’s watch. The one she’d said had come from her grandfather. How—why—?

  Winston Baker had the same watch as my great-grandfather. It was Winston Baker’s memories I’d been slipping into. Winston Baker, whose portrait no longer got painted to be hung in Roseborne’s front hall.

  Icy fingers raced over my skin. I blurted out the question before I could think better of it. “Why are there only seven portraits in the hall now?”

  Hubert’s gaze snapped back to me. “Pardon me?”

  I fumbled with my words. “In the hall by the dean’s office. There are those painted portraits—someone told me there’s a contest every year. But there’s a spot where it looks like there used to be another one hanging and nothing’s there now. Why was one of them taken down?”

  The professor’s brow knit. My abrupt change in subject had to have thrown her. But I might get a more honest answer because of that.

  “That place of honor was abandoned,” she said stiffly. “Given up, never returned—not really.”

  With that disjointed statement, her expression took on the weirdly analytical vibe I’d seen before, as if she were trying to discern something beneath my face.

  As if she were looking for someone else there.

  My heart skittered. I groped for something else to say. But Hubert was already motioning toward the door. “I think that’s enough of a talk. I’ll see that Miss Droz is looked after. Don’t worry yourself about it.”

  I stepped out of her office in a daze. As the door clicked shut behind me, I stared at the wall across from me without really seeing it.

  Sometime around 1927, eight students had done something that had transformed Roseborne forever. One of them had abandoned the school and never returned. That one had a pocket watch I knew and whose memories were seeping into my head.

  Me, the one person who’d remembered someone Roseborne had swallowed up despite the staff’s obvious powers—the one person they hadn’t been able to make stay away and instead had locked into this bizarre cycle of repeating arrivals. I could be more connected to this place than any other student had ever been.

  What other powers might I have that I hadn’t stumbled on yet?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Trix

  I didn’t feel all that powerful as I waited in the hall outside the math classroom. The thought of looking Elias in the face after the way I’d cast off him and the other two guys this morning made me queasy. But I had to talk to someone, and out of my available options, Elias was the one I trusted most to keep a clear head and give me his honest take on the situation.

  If there was something horrifying about my discovery, he’d show it. If he could think of anything I could do that would make the situation better, he’d tell me, even if it’d be hard. I thought I could count on that.

  The door opened, and the students drifted out. I stayed where I was. A couple of minutes after the last of them had wandered away, Elias himself emerged, looking vaguely harried but glad to be done. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me, his chin lifting and his shoulders pushing back to give him an even more professional appearance in the suit he filled out so well.

  “Beatrix,” he said, and left me to decide where to go from there.

  “Elias.” I resisted the urge to nibble at my lip. “Something’s come up that I was hoping I could talk through with you. About, ah, the schoolwork. Do you have a moment?”

  I could tell from his expression that he understood what kind of “schoolwork” I meant. He nodded and motioned for me to walk with him. As always when we were inside the school, he kept a studied distance from me on the way down the stairs.

  We stepped outside into the dim sunlight and cool air beneath the clouded sky. My feet moved toward the northern section of wall instinctively, even though it wasn’t likely I’d be able to tell how well my planting of Violet’s rose was working just yet.

  Elias walked alongside me in silence, giving me the space to decide how and when I began. Somehow that only made me feel more ill. I swiped my hand across my mouth.

  “This doesn’t change what I said this morning. It isn’t personal. You and the other guys—you’re still the ones who have the best handle on what’s going on at Roseborne and what I’ve figured out so far.”

  “Understood,” Elias said quietly. “Do you want to tell me what ‘came up’ today?”

  The truth was, not really. A large part of me was dreading finding out how he’d look at me, talk to me, if he agreed with the conclusions I’d drawn. But why the hell had I brought him out here if I wasn’t going to lay it out and see whether I’d just gone bonkers?

&
nbsp; “It’s big,” I said, grappling with where to start. “I think it explains why I was able to remember Cade and this place to begin with, and why the staff don’t believe they can simply kick me out and keep me from causing more problems for them. Why I’ve been having those weird memories that aren’t mine. All of it. But it’s probably going to sound kind of crazy.”

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning, and we’ll see where it gets us.” Elias shot me a careful smile. “I promise I won’t sugarcoat my opinion on your sanity.”

  “That’s why I came to you.” I dragged in a breath. “Okay. First, you need to know that my mother had this pocket watch—gold, on a chain, with an interesting etching on the case. I’ve never seen another one like it. And it was weird, really, that she held onto it at all, when it was obviously an antique and she and my dad rarely held on to anything they could cash in to buy drugs for more than a week or two. She said it was her grandfather’s, but she didn’t care much about family otherwise.”

  “I can see why you’d remember it, then,” Elias said.

  “Yeah. And today, I went to talk to Professor Hubert in her office. She has some photos up from what’s got to be the same era at Roseborne as the yearbook. Most of them had the eighth guy from the art room photos in them, the one no one makes a portrait of anymore.”

  “Winston.”

  Of course he’d remember the name after only discussing it once.

  “Yeah, and in one of the photos… he was holding a pocket watch. A pocket watch that looked exactly like the one my mom had. And when I looked at the photograph, another of those memories hit me, like I fell right into that moment—inside his head. It could be all the weird memories that have come over me were his. I tried to ask Professor Hubert about the eighth portrait, and all she said was a bit of vague stuff about him abandoning Roseborne and not coming back.”

  When I glanced at Elias to see what he made of that, he was gazing into the distance, his brow knit. “I have noticed over the years that there are times when one or another of the professors won’t have any classes for a week or two. I don’t have any proof, because the new students show up at random times, but I’ve wondered if they leave to go looking for new targets. I’m not sure how they’d find us otherwise. That theory makes even more sense if she’s basically confirming that they can leave, and they have some choice about whether they come back.”

  “But they’ve always come back except Winston, whenever he left the last time.” That wasn’t the main point I’d expected Elias to focus on, though. My fingers curled into my palms.

  He hadn’t totally missed my train of thought. He glanced over at me, his hand twitching as if he’d been going to reach for mine and stopped himself. “You’re thinking because of the watch and the memories—and the fact that you made it here at all—that after he left, he might have started a family. That whatever the staff became to give them all this power, they’re still human enough to have kids. And he was your mother’s grandfather, your great-grandfather.”

  He didn’t sound disgusted by the thought. My next breath came a little easier. “The pieces seem to fit. A little bit of his affinity with the college could have passed on to me, made it so I’m partly immune to their magic. Obviously the staff still here are way stronger than I am, since they’re completely… whatever they are, and I’m only an eighth or something, but it was enough to make a difference.”

  Whatever they were, whatever monstrous energy they’d let take them over, it ran through my veins too, even if diluted. I rubbed my arms, suppressing a shiver. The breeze murmured through the leaves of the trees we’d passed between and licked over me, tugging at the sleeves of my shirt and the hem of my skirt. I wished I’d brought my leather jacket for this walk.

  “I’m not sure if we’d ever be able to confirm it for sure,” Elias said. “It could be that this Winston guy gave his watch to your actual grandfather, and a little magic transferred with it. I’d say it’s pretty clear there’s some connection, though.”

  “Some of the energy that keeps this place running is inside me.” My mouth twisted. “Some of that awfulness.”

  “Hey.” Elias touched my arm lightly to stop me. He looked down at me, his dark eyes solemn. “You can’t blame yourself for anything that happens here. Whoever Winston was to you, he abandoned this place. Apparently he didn’t like how things were going either. And whatever powers you’ve got in you, you’ve been using them to try to help us, not the staff. You’re nothing like them.”

  Other than I could be cruel and vindictive when I had enough reason to be. I ducked my head. “I don’t think that’s totally true. I’ve done awful things, even if you haven’t had to see them. There’ve been times when I hardly felt like I could control myself. I doubt you of all people would give that a pass.”

  To my surprise, Elias laughed. “Are you kidding me? Trix, do you have any idea—I love that you’re unpredictable, that sometimes you say what you’re thinking without worrying about the consequences, that you’re not afraid to let loose—it’s something I never really learned. If being that way led to some awful situations too… well, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a fair trade-off. Being a control freak didn’t stop me from wreaking havoc on a whole lot of people.”

  “It’s easy to say—”

  “I’m not just saying it.” He hesitated and then touched my shoulder, letting his hand linger there. “What do you remember about the first time we really got to know each other?”

  Those glimpses of the more distant past slipped through my mind again. Laughter, the wind in my hair, his hands hot against my body, a rush of exhilaration. Words I’d spoken rose up in the back of my head. Have you seriously never climbed a tree in your whole life? We need to fix that.

  My gaze lifted to the scattered trees around you. “I got you to go tree-climbing?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “With a certain amount of badgering. And I felt pretty ridiculous at first. But ridiculous and then free, like I’m not sure I ever have before.”

  An impulse hit me—one of those unpredictable urges Elias had just said he loved. My body balked for a second with the thought of Cade, of whether he might somehow be watching even now… But there was no sign of that hunched, coarse-furred beast I’d encountered in the southern woods anywhere around us.

  And I needed to figure out where I really stood with Elias—with all the guys—for myself too, didn’t I? I wouldn’t really trust my judgement unless I’d made it for myself.

  “What are you waiting for, then?” I said to Elias, already taking off toward the nearest tree with low enough branches. “You’ve already practiced once. Let’s see who can get higher faster.”

  Elias’s next laugh dissolved into a hasty breath as he jogged after me. He gripped the branches of a maple next to mine and hauled himself onto the lowest one with a flexing of his shoulders that I couldn’t help admiring. I scrambled farther up, not letting myself think too hard about where I set my hands or feet, the ground falling away beneath me.

  When I looked over at Elias again, he’d climbed nearly as high up as I had. He caught my eye with a rueful shake of his head, but he was beaming at the same time. Grinning with so much joy that the sight knocked the breath out of me.

  He hadn’t been kidding or lying. He loved this—he loved that I’d gotten him to do it. He liked me even with my reckless side.

  A tingle shot through me, so potent I could almost taste electricity on my tongue. Abruptly, I was sure that right now, in this moment, not one member of Roseborne’s staff could have found me on campus. The power that had shielded me before was wrapping around me again.

  But this—this didn’t really prove anything about Elias. This was just fun. The worst possible danger was a short fall that wasn’t all that likely considering those muscles of his. Would he still think I was so great if I challenged him in ways that could really screw him over?

  Lust and a different sort of hunger—to be sure, to test my power and his affec
tion—swelled inside me. I leapt down a few branches and then sprang straight to the ground, the landing jolting through my legs.

  “Come with me,” I said. “We can let loose way more than this.”

  Elias raised his eyebrows, but he clambered down after me. I caught his hand briefly with a little tug and set off for the school building.

  When we made it inside, I headed straight up the stairs without looking back at him. The rasp of his shoes against the floor right behind me set off little sparks of anticipation through my chest—and lower.

  Was this stupid? Maybe. Maybe I should have steered clear of the guys like I’d planned to. But I was more than just the girl I’d thought I was this morning. He couldn’t hurt me, not if I didn’t let him.

  The question was, how much was he willing to risk me hurting him?

  I pushed past the door to the math classroom. When Elias had come in after me, I twisted the lock on the knob. With my pulse thrumming all through my body, I nudged him toward his desk and hopped up on its edge, shoving the stack of textbooks to the side. Then I held out my hand to him.

  “Fuck me,” I said. “Right here, right now.”

  Elias’s pupils dilated with desire. Seeing his longing written all over his face made me want him even more. His voice came out hoarse. “Trix, are you sure—”

  “I think I can stop the staff from realizing what we’re doing,” I said. “But I can’t promise that absolutely. I don’t know how they’ll react if they catch on. It’d probably be worse for you than for me.”

  He might hate me for even asking him to take that risk. That was fine. Then I’d know.

  Elias hesitated for just a second longer. Then he stepped up to me and tipped my face to meet his lips.

  His mouth claimed mine, all searing passion, so intense I started to melt right there. My hands fisted the fabric of his shirt and jerked it free from his slacks. When I pushed at his suit jacket, he shed it from one arm and then the other, as if he couldn’t bear to let go of my face completely. I ran my hands up under his shirt, tracing the lines of taut muscle there, and he hummed approvingly in the middle of our next kiss.