by Lucy Auburn
But maybe he has a reason for his sour personality. All that pain twists him down. And he keeps people at length because... well, because he's an addict, recovered or not, afraid of what might happen if we get too close. I met plenty of people like him in the court-mandated therapy I went to in prison. The more wounded someone is, the more they put up walls to keep others away. Sometimes those walls are cutting words, sour expressions, and an inability to trust.
I tell myself that there's nothing beneath Grayson's surface layer of asshole, but I know that's not true. A sweet, kind, humble guy like Wyatt wouldn't stick with him if there weren't a redeemable person under all that jerkishness. I just don't know if I'll ever get to meet the Grayson who instilled confidence in a guy like him.
"Alright, Mr. Hughes." Professor Vervaine breaks me out of my brief reverie. "You may begin in three... two..."
As she chops her hand in the air, Grayson turns towards the clock. His eyes narrow and his mouth thins in concentration. Unlike the professor, he doesn't hold a hand out towards the clock, but his fingers do tighten on the head of his cane. He's holding it with both hands, leaning a considerable amount of weight on it. The focus he directs towards the clock is immeasurable.
Watching the little spirit standing on the desk, I see... nothing. Or, very little. He taps his shoes. He frowns and turns around. He even, at one point, strolls forward, only to stop, a frustrated expression on his face. But he doesn't transform at all.
Whatever Mental Class strength Grayson has, it isn't moldable or bendable, because he can't seem to do anything to the little spirit. He can make it move and whistle and even clap its hands, but it takes him nearly a minute to get the little guy's suit to change color.
By the time Professor Vervaine claps her hands to signal a stop, the clock reads... seventy-two. A tiny number compared to what the professor managed in a fraction of the time.
"Better than your last score," the professor says, which makes me wince. "Alright, Ellen, your turn. Keep in mind it's your first try—don't be ashamed if it takes a few."
There are sniggers in the classroom, and I hear one of the students mutter, some Brutus. For a class full of college graduates getting their Masters degrees, there sure is a lot of snide underhandedness. Then again, the things I've heard about graduate and worse, doctoral programs, suggest most of them are worse than middle school. A graduate school for killers could only invite the kind of cut-throat, petty competition that thrives off the worst traits of humanity.
As the professor resets the clock and sets up her stopwatch, I sneak a glance at Grayson. He's stoic and flinty-eyed, but I can tell he's angry—at himself, no doubt. It seems unfair of the professor to make us compete like this, when she knows Grayson's scores already. Maybe she thinks he'll improve if he's afraid of losing to the new girl, but if so, she underestimates how easily he bends to pressure. Then again, based on the sour expression he's wearing, maybe I underestimate his ego.
Leaning in, I ask him in a low voice, "What's the matter, afraid of losing to a girl?"
"No." He narrows his eyes at me. "I'm afraid of never graduating and getting out of this place."
"Not to worry—now that your fate is connected to mine, you're sure to make it out."
He snorts. "Make it one round with the Augmator before you start bragging too much. Your Affinity is just as poorly suited to this type of game as mine—you'll see."
I'm about to ask him what he means, since Professor Vervaine claimed anyone can play this game, when she steps behind her desk again and looks to me. "Ellen! Your turn. We begin in three... two..."
When she chops her hand in the air, it's my turn to figure out this game. I can feel the pressure of it all, mostly in the form of over a dozen intelligent, cutthroat, snide graduate students sitting at the desks behind me, watching and waiting for me to fail. If I do, they'll no doubt come up with a clever and cutting nickname for me—one far better than Killer Ellen. One that rhymes.
I can't let that happen. And I can't let Grayson be right about me, either. Licking my lips, feeling his eyes follow the movement, I step up in front of the desk and stare at the tiny spirit man in front of me.
He's almost kind of cute, really. When you look past the fact that he's ten inches tall. That suit is a bit dated, and his dress shoes make him look like a dweeb, but I bet he's got a hot spiritual bod under his suit.
Just for the hell of it, I try to imagine him naked. Nothing happens. He doesn't even twitch or tap a foot like he did when Grayson had his round.
Mouth tense, I try tapping into my Mental Class, like I did while holding Mason's hand, but I've never done it without my connection to him. Besides, seeing into the possible-future doesn't seem to be much of an advantage in this game.
"Use your imagination," Vervaine coaches me. "The key to this game is creativity and precision. It's not about how much of your mind you use, it's about how exact you are. Though of course mental strength helps too."
One of the students mutters something snide behind me, and there's a brief snicker, but I ignore it. This is just there way of initiating me into their ranks, the way the Physical Class students did by throwing their Affinities at me, and the Spiritual Class student did with creepy ghost talk. Of course the Mental Class kids would be sarcastic mouthy know-it-alls; it comes with the territory.
Back in prison, our group counselor—yes, really, we also did yoga, though the food was shit and women still got sent to the SHU—our counselor taught some of us with quote unquote "rage problems" how to meditate. I was never very good at it, but what I was good at was staying completely still with my eyes open while imagining that adorable kittens were prancing around the room. Or sometimes I'd imagine that I was bashing the head of one of the sadistic guards in. One or the other, kittens or death.
I let my mind wander now, breathing slowly and deeply, tapping into the part of my brain that imagines things. The part that dreams when I'm asleep, and sometimes when I'm awake, too. Everyone needs their imagination to help them escape an inescapable situation.
As I tap into mine, I start to see a dozen different things.
A man smiling so wide that his mouth is like a giant red slash through his face.
The sky burning, clouds licking with flame.
My mother standing in a wide-open field, hair ruffled by the wind, blood dripping from the wound on her throat.
The Black Serpent again, his face twisted in anger, yelling at me right before the tip of a sword explodes from his middle and he collapses in front of me, dead.
His corpse catching fire.
An actual black serpent, coiling around and around the corpse, tightly wound until there's nothing left but ashes.
I blink, and I'm back in the classroom again. The little spirit man is standing on the desk. No—he's warping into flame, then a snake, then the corpse of Lothario-slash-Connor, then my father, then my mother, all in the blink of an eye.
The hands on the clock spin wildly.
Professor Vervaine claps, signaling an end to my round.
I stare at the hands, then look over at Grayson. He's not wearing any facial expression at all. He might as well be made of stone, that's how little he's reacting to my score.
"One hundred and fifty-two. Good luck, Ellen, and congratulations on such a high score for your first round. You'll be a promising student in this class."
If Grayson Hughes hated me before, he must loathe me to his center now. As we head back to our seats, I feel his eyes on me, burning two holes in the center of my shoulder blades.
When I look over, though, he's not glaring or scowling or even frowning. He's just... watching. Observing. Staring at me like he doesn't know what he's looking at. With his brooding blue eyes and chiseled cheekbones. That model handsome face that he doesn't deserve. He plays with the edge of his upturned collar, and I find myself wondering what he looks like beneath all the layers of clothing he's wearing.
Which is when I realize that I'm the one staring now, not
him. And I have to tear my eyes away.
It's a relief when the class is over.
4:20 PM Emotional Class with Professor Warren
They really shouldn't hold a class at four twenty in a room full of incense smoke. Especially when the professor, a middle-aged white woman with long snowy braided hair, looks like she has grow lamps in her closet. The entire impression is off.
Then again, this is the class for those with an Emotional Affinity. I'm not sure exactly what that entails, but it doesn't really surprise me that the seating an eclectic but comfortable mix of loveseats, recliners, and armchairs, or that there's a coffee table in the center of the room covered in stuffed animals and tissues. Emotions are the name of the game, after all, so this room more than any would be full of comfort.
Why, then, do I feel like I've walked into the most dangerous room in the world?
Somehow all of the other students have beat me here, even Mason, though I know for a fact that I'm on time. They're all lounging comfortably, or even laying down, on the various seats around the room, a haze of incense and candle smoke in the air.
There's no threat in the room at all—the few eyes that look my way are half-lidded, curious but not intense—but for some reason every hair on my body is standing on end. I feel a deep sense of foreboding, and find myself looking around the room for some kind of threat.
"Sylvia." The voice is Mason's, his tone sharp and disapproving. "Leave her alone."
A girl lounging on a worn plaid recliner tosses her hair behind her shoulder, looking over at Mason with her head tilted. "Why should I? It's her fault for not emotionally centering and shielding herself."
"Because if you don't," he says calmly, "I'll show you your greatest fear."
"You can't do that." Sylvia pouts in his direction. "Fears are off-limits."
"So is using your powers on a classmate outside of a sanctioned face-off or initiation, but here you are, breaking the rules anyway. That's kind of a thing around here in this school full of killers, isn't it?"
Tired of being talked around but not to, I step into the room and face Sylvia head-on. She has dark, hooded eyes and sleek espresso-brown hair, her long legs thrown over the arm of the recliner, the pleated skirt she's wearing ruched up towards her thighs. Based on the way she looks at me, I know why she's messing with me: she's attracted to Mason, and probably jealous that he's my Conduit.
After all, everything I was told about the connection suggests that Brutus had children with his.
"Until you accept your fate and your Conduits, you won't be able to fight someone like me." The memory of the Black Serpent's words rises unbidden, his snarled sentence one I've been trying to forget.
He wanted me to "bond" with him in a wedding ceremony that seemed to be part ritual, and suggested that if I did, I wouldn't need to bond with Mason, Wyatt, Levi, and Grayson to reach my full powers. If that's what Sylvia is thinking—that I'm going to marry Mason in some kind of ceremony—no wonder she's looking at me like I shit on her rug and stole her cat.
"Whatever your beef is with me, save it for class," I tell her. "Otherwise, I might use one of my four Affinities on you in return. I have the feeling you wouldn't like that very much."
Based on the way her mouth thins, she wouldn't. I don't have to tell her that I'm only really at even half power with one of my Affinities. My telekinesis could knock her out in a heartbeat, and she saw me beat Mason in the arena—not that she has to know how I beat him, or why. The threat is enough to make her stop, and the feeling crawling down my spine goes away all at once.
"Ellen, over here." Mason motions towards the empty spot on the small sofa next to him, giving me a soft smile. "I saved you a spot."
"Thanks." I take the spot, ignoring the feeling of Sylvia still staring at me resentfully. "Am I late or something? Everyone was here before me. Headmaster Shu's schedule was kind of scrawled and messy, so maybe I got the time wrong."
"No, you're on time. We just like to show up early to talk about how our day has gone." I make a small noise of protest, and Mason chuckles. "It helps to be emotionally centered before working with an Emotional Affinity. After all, any little worry or bit of sadness can kick the whole thing off center."
"The way you say it makes it sound like group therapy." Snorting, I shake my head. "I had enough of that when I was in prison."
He eyes me curiously. "You don't really talk about prison. In fact, you don't talk about your old life at all. I know some stuff, but it's all things the media said after..."
"After my ex turned up in a bunch of pieces stuffed into two suitcases, and I turned myself in? Yeah, the media was real fun then. Even more fun after my mom was murdered and they said I did it."
"If you ever want to talk about all that, I'm here."
I'm sure Mason is. Heart in his hand, ready for me to break it.
That's exactly the problem.
Thankfully, before I can figure out a way to let him down gently—or break his heart in the process of trying to keep some space—the professor walks into the room. She's wearing a loose kimono-style robe with a watercolor pattern, two fluffy bear slippers, enough bracelets to jangle as her hands move, and has her hair up in the world's messiest bun. Basically, she looks like she should be teaching preschoolers, not killers.
Yet I know if she's a professor here, she's a killer. The gaudy Shadow Fold ring on her finger says as much. Which means I'll have to be on my toes—even if that's a hard concept to apply to something like emotions. At least my Emotional Affinity gave me Penny; her, I wouldn't trade for the world.
"Oh my, what a tense place this is," she says to a bunch of half-snoozing grad students in their mid-twenties, all of whom look one toke away from falling into a coma. "Let's lighten the load a bit and do some warmups, shall we? Then we'll go around the room and talk about the new depths of discoveries we've all found in our emotional wells. Breathe in, one, two, three, out, one, two, three..."
I have the feeling that this class, more than any of the others, is going to make me want to kill again.
At least Mason is here. It can't be all bad with him at my side.
Chapter 13
"So, what're you up to now that class is over?" Mason catches up with me out in the hallway, standing near the courtyard and staring at the fountains. "I was thinking, y'know, we could grab dinner at the dining hall before training with Abarra."
I groan. "I forgot about training," I confess. "But I don't really have any dinner plans. Eve went out on another mission this afternoon—apparently she's in high demand. I just have to feed Penny."
"I'll walk with you," Mason says, all smooth confidence. The grin he sends my way pulls at the scar near his mouth and makes him look like a dashing pirate. "We should probably brainstorm about what we saw in that red-sky version of campus. If Wyatt is right, there's not much time to figure it out."
"I told Headmaster Shu about it."
"Same," he says, walking with me towards Eve's room in the upper level of the building. "But she kind of just rolled her eyes and told me she'd mention it to the campus. I don't think she really believes this place could come under attack like that... if that's what we saw."
"It did seem pretty spooky." Mason falls in beside me, the heat of his body brushing up against my arm, and something electric goes through me at the feeling. After being kept like a pet by the Black Serpent and nearly watching him die, I have to admit that Mason is a far better man—and I don't know what I would do if we'd lost him. "Are you... doing okay? I mean, that sword cut was pretty bad. But you seem... okay."
"The medic cleared me for classes." We reach the top of the stairs, and he stretches exaggeratedly, then slaps his chest. "All better. See?"
"It was so much blood." The image is seared into my retinas no matter what I do. "I thought for sure you were going to die."
"Still here. Thanks to you."
Staring up into his warm brown eyes, I swallow. It's hard to remember, in moments like this, that I nee
d to be careful with Mason's heart. I shouldn't lead him on or make him believe there can be anything between us—I know I'm too broken for romance. But when I look at him, I almost fool myself into thinking that I could sink into his strong arms, rest my head against his warm chest, and forget about the outside world for a moment. Forget, even, about my past history with love.
"What if the Black Serpent had something to do with what we saw?" I ask suddenly, mind spinning. "That ring was connected to him through blood magic, after all. And the version of the university we saw was coated in a blood-red haze. What if he gets out of his pocket dimension, even without that ring, and comes for us?"
"Not a bad theory." He considers it, biting his lower lip in a way that makes me want to nibble on it too. "We should test it out during training. You know—when we're looking into the future and all that."
Which reminds me. "This morning, Eve said she was going on her job as a secretary. I asked her to send me a photo..." Fishing my new cell phone out of my pocket, I unlock it on the third try—my password keeps falling out of my head. The text conversation with Eve bubbles up, and I stare at the screen, then turn it towards Mason, dumbfounded. "Look."
He stares at the photo with the same kind of anxious awe I know I'm feeling. "That's the disguise we saw her wear when we tested your Mental Affinity."
"It is. Same outfit, same hair... I didn't tell her what I saw, either. So it really was a..."
"Vision of the future."
For a moment we just stare at each other, completely silent, my stomach churning. If I really can see into the future when I hold Mason's hand and tap into my powers, that means we can do it again, maybe even figure out what's going on here. I might even be able to use those powers to discover the identity of my mother's killer.
But so far I haven't been able to control what I see. Just who. Looking into the future could reveal things I desperately need to know—or mean discovering things I never wanted.