by Sadie Moss
This is bad. This is really bad.
Kendal and Gwen clutch at me, and I try to stand firm, to not let them see that I’m terrified too. Someone has to be the strong one around here.
“Students,” Hardwick says, raising his voice to reach all of us. There’s a scratchiness, a roughness to his tone, that makes it seem like he’s having to force the words out. “If you would all gather in the assembly hall, please.”
Everyone looks like they’re bursting with questions, but nobody dares to say anything. A few admins split off to gather the students who didn’t wait on the quad, and we all shuffle into the auditorium like ghosts and take our seats. Gwen sits beside me, and I can feel her trembling.
I expect Hardwick to walk up to the podium, but instead, another man gets up there. He’s wearing a sleek suit and a badge that denotes him as a high-ranking member of the Circuit. He looks like he was carved out of stone, like I could dig and dig and dig and I wouldn’t find any trace of warmth or softness in him.
“That’s William Staley,” Kendal whispers quickly to me, her voice rushed like she’s running out of time.
That’s sort of how it feels. Like we’re running out of time.
Or maybe it’s already run out.
Up on stage, the other Circuit officers fan out, and as they do, I realize I recognize one of them. It’s Aurora.
She’s wearing a gray suit, her white-blonde hair slicked back into a ponytail as usual, but she looks… concerned.
Anyone else would probably look outright distressed, but Aurora’s always been cool and businesslike. She’s the officer who came to see me after my magic sparked and gave me the choice to give it up or come here, and she’s not exactly the warm and fuzzy type. Her face is usually pretty expressionless, actually.
But right now, she looks worried.
And that worries me.
“Students,” the man named Staley says. His voice is gruff and hard as a rock. “Thank you for joining us today.”
Sure. As if we had a choice in the matter. My lips press together, and I’m overcome by the nearly irresistible urge to flip him off.
“I’m sorry to distress you with such news,” Staley says, not sounding sorry at all, or any other emotion for that matter, “but I am here to tell you that after great deliberation, it is decided that we must shut down Griffin Academy.”
…no.
No!
Gwen lets out a small whimper, and Kendal’s entire body seems to lock up. I’m not entirely sure why I do it, but I grab my phone and start recording, angling it carefully so that it’s hidden in my lap but I can still pick up Staley’s face on the screen.
“Since the academy is closing down, we’ll be transferring you all to a temporary holding facility just outside of Portland,” Staley continues. “Because none of you have passed your final exams and been granted your license, you are considered untrained Unpredictables, and so we cannot let you back into society until your magic has been controlled.”
Ice slides down my spine, and I hear someone scream—I recognize the voice. I heard her screaming in pain once as her magic was ripped from her, and I know she’s thinking of having to go through that horrific experience all over again.
Tandy.
The Circuit officers seem to have expected this kind of reaction, because they start moving immediately, walking off the stage and down into the rows of seats in the audience, surrounding us. Other people are screaming now too, shouting and crying. One student tries to punch a Circuit officer, Gwen’s sobbing, and Kendal is white as a sheet. It’s chaos all around—and I’m torn between feeling numb and wanting to vomit.
If the school is shutting down, having our powers “controlled” can only mean one thing.
They’re going to take our magic from us.
Chapter 9
My first instinct is to fight. My sonic boom is deadly, and I can mirror other people’s powers—my cuff is still off from fight class, so I have all my magic at my disposal right now.
I could get out. I could run, find Asher, Cam, and Dmitri, and make a break for it.
But what about Roman? And Maddy? What about all the scared students around me?
Besides, the officers look like they’re braced for us to rebel. Fighting back would just be doing what they expect. It would only feed their prejudice, give credence to their belief that Unpredictables are inherently dangerous.
Instead, I grab Gwen and hold her to me, comforting her—and using her body as a shield as I keep filming with my phone. This has to be shown to the world. This has to get out. If I can get this video to the guys, they’ll upload it onto the internet, and the whole magical community will know what’s happening to us.
If the Circuit is really going to do this, I’m not letting them do it in secret.
I keep a hold on Gwen, hiding my phone behind my back with one hand as a Circuit staff member affixes a cuff to my other wrist, repressing my magic. Alyssa is loudly threatening to call her parents, promising that the wrath of the Marquet family will fall on the Circuit if they go through with this—and for once, I’m grateful for her bitchiness and her rich family. Not that I’m at all confident they can actually stop this. It feels too big for that by now.
Tandy’s having a full-on panic attack, hyperventilating, screaming, struggling, and Erin’s ripped away from her so officials can sedate her. Erin starts yelling too, because hey, that’s her girlfriend they’re taking, and I keep my camera on all of it.
I film them rounding us up and putting us on buses. I film them walking up and down the aisles with magic crackling between their fingers, ready to blast any one of us who looks like we’re going to fling ourselves out the window.
I film them taking us to a facility covered in magical wards and placing us in massive dorm rooms with barrack-style bunk beds.
We’re finally put into a line, and they start confiscating our phones from us. Fuck. I film them taking the phones of some people ahead of me, and then I end the video and send it on the group chat.
I want to explain, to say more about what’s happening, but there’s no time. I just send six words.
Me: Protect Maddy. I love you all.
The video sends along with the message. I’m pretty damn sure the Circuit officers will be checking our phones for shit like this, so I hit “delete” on the video, then go into “recently deleted” and get rid of it there too—just in time.
Kendal’s ahead of me, and I can tell she’s stalling as they confiscate her phone. I know she noticed me filming earlier, and she’s been helping cover for me ever since we got here.
When the redhead girl steps away from the Circuit officers, I hand my phone over, then coax Gwen to come along with us. She’s no longer crying, just sniffling and staring blankly at the ground ahead of us as we shuffle along.
God, I hope the guys get that video out. I hope they look after Maddy. She’s not Unpredictable, but I’m the only family she has, the only family left. I promised her I would never leave her, that I’d look after myself—fuck, did I make a mistake by not fighting? Should I have done what I could to get out and then run to her?
It’s too late now. Second-guessing won’t get me anywhere.
All I can do is pray that the people I love are all right.
The conditions here aren’t awful. There’s no privacy, but the guys and girls are split up into separate dorms, and we’re told there’s a dining hall and a library and an exercise yard.
Feels a lot like a prison, if you ask me. A nice one, but still. A prison.
We’re brought into the dining hall for a meal first thing, since we were just on a damn bus for a few hours without food, and I’m surprised to find the majority of the administrators, professors, and school staff are here too. Tamlin looks slightly rumpled, and I catch Professor Goldstein standing near Hardwick, wiping the lenses of her cat-eye glasses with the hem of her shirt.
What are they all doing here? They passed their exams, so they’re legally allowed to
use their magic. They’ve proven they can control it. So it makes no sense that the Circuit would make them stay here too.
Before I can come up with an answer to that mystery, my gaze lands on Roman, and I forget about everything else.
“Elliot.” He yanks several people out of the way and grabs me, hauling me to him.
I claw at his shoulders, clinging to him, my body shaking with adrenaline I didn’t even realize I was holding in check. I bury my face in his chest and breathe him in. God, I’m so glad we declared our relationship to Dean Hardwick last semester. There’s no fucking way I’d be able to let go of Roman right now, to pretend he was anything less to me than a man I love.
“Thank God, you’re okay,” he whispers.
“I’m fine,” I reply, my voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt. “I filmed all of it and sent it to the others. They can upload it online, get other people seeing it.”
Roman kisses the top of my head. “You clever rebel.”
He’s trying to tease me, to praise me, but that thread of worry doesn’t leave his voice, and he’s hugging me so hard he’s in danger of crushing me. He’s worried.
I can’t blame him. This is spiraling out of control, out of the hands of the staff, out of everyone’s hands.
“Why are you here?” I pull away just enough to peer up into his face, needing to see his eyes. “Why are all of you here?”
“Protest,” Roman says grimly, still keeping a firm grip on me too. “We’re standing in solidarity with our students.”
It’s sweet, and it makes me love him even more, if that’s possible. It makes warmth flood my chest for all of the school staff and admins. But I know it’s bigger than that too. A few years’ difference, and Roman could be like me, a student unable to even take his exams to prove himself, with his magic in danger of being ripped away from him.
Same with any of the administrators, even the ones who graduated a long time ago. They all know that, in a different set of circumstances, this could’ve been their fate.
I’m so damn glad the guys graduated last year. They’re okay. They’ll be okay. Roman will be okay. Maddy will be okay.
They’ll be fine. And that’s what I need to cling to.
Roman isn’t allowed to stay with me—we can eat meals together, but then we’re separated for bed, in different dorms, and there’s a strict curfew. Blank-faced Circuit officers patrol the compound to enforce it.
Yeah, just like a vacation, right?
Fucking bastards.
Everyone in the dorm is quiet. I sit up with Erin, the two of us sitting silent on her bed, until late at night when the door opens and two officers bring in Tandy and a couple others who were sedated. Tandy’s a zombie, heavy and loose-limbed, staring dully into nothing. Erin strokes her hair as we lay her down onto the bed.
“What did they do?” she whispers, grabbing her girlfriend’s limp hand as tears glisten in her eyes. “What did they do to you, Tan?”
I don’t have an answer for her. I don’t have an answer for anyone. I just sit up with her and give her what comfort I can as Tandy mumbles and babbles nonsense, until they both fall asleep.
Then I go back to my own bed. I have the bunk above Kendal, and she’s still up too, Gwen’s head in her lap. She’s been singing her lullabies.
“We have to do something,” Kendal whispers before I climb the ladder to the top bunk.
I’m surprised to hear those words coming from Kendal, of all people, seeing as she’s such a wallflower. She hates confrontation. But when I duck my head to look at her, I see that her shoulders are square and her jaw set. Fear still clouds her eyes, but it’s not tamping down her determination.
“We will,” I promise her.
I just don’t know what.
But the very next day—I start to get answers.
There isn’t much for us to do, so we’re set loose in the exercise yard to get some fresh air. We’re not exactly prisoners, even though it sure feels a lot like it, and it’s clear this was a bit of a last-minute deal since nobody seems to know what the hell to do with us. There’s no schedule or planned activities or fields they can put us in to get cheap labor.
I’m hanging out by the wall of the building in the shade, watching as Tamlin organizes everyone to do exercises. Of course she’s managing to conduct a physical fitness class even after we’ve been arrested and detained overnight.
Yeah, yeah, technically we’re not arrested—but only technically.
God, I hope the guys got my message. I really wish I still had my damn phone.
The door to the building is several yards away from where I’m leaning against the wall. It opens, and out steps Aurora.
I just about choke on my own spit seeing her. I didn’t expect her to be in a place like this. The rest of the Circuit higher-ups—Staley included—bailed before we got here, and now it’s mostly lower level officers monitoring us and organizing things. The blonde woman looks horribly out of place next to the rest of us in her neatly pressed and tailored suit. Even the other Circuit officers here look like beat cops in uniform. Not whatever Hugo Boss thing she’s sporting.
My surprise only heightens when Aurora scans the crowd in the yard, spots me, and walks over.
Oh, great. I feel like I’m going to throw up. I do not want to have to deal with Aurora and smile and pretend everything’s fine—but what else am I supposed to do? I can’t exactly fight back with my cuff activated and a bunch of Circuit guards around.
And more than being unsure what to do or how to handle her… I feel betrayed. Aurora wasn’t exactly someone I had warm and fuzzy feelings for, but I trusted her not to be horrible, not to buy into the growing sentiment that Unpredictables are a problem. She strongly encouraged me to go to Griffin and to not give up my magic. I thought she at least thought we were okay as a group—even if I probably gave her a hard time as an individual.
“Miss Sinclair.” Aurora stops less than a foot away from me, her voice quiet. “Elliot. Might I have a word in private?”
I see some people glancing over at us, Kendal among them. Roman’s not out here—he’s with Hardwick and a few others in the administration area arguing for better accommodations for us—and it’s probably a good thing, or he’d be right in Aurora’s face.
“Why?” I ask, but even as I say it I know that’s a stupid question.
Whether I meant to or not, I’ve become a rallying point for Unpredictables. And a poster child for why Unpredictables are dangerous. Both sides want to use me, which is a barrel of laughs, and I’d really like to just kind of disappear into the woodwork, thanks.
Aurora probably wants to talk to me about that. How the Circuit would like to use me as an example, in either a good or a bad way, for this whole “taking our magic” business. Whee.
Aurora raises an eyebrow. She’s poised, like Professor Tamlin, but Tamlin has this warm and friendly air to her, like a big sister who comes in every so often and sweeps you away on trips to the French Riviera. Aurora’s poised like a block of ice, like that intimidating principal you had in elementary school.
“I’d like to talk about some delicate matters that I’d prefer everyone else not overhear. You know how gossip spreads under ordinary circumstances, and in a tense situation like this, it’s even worse.”
She turns, indicating with her hand for me to enter the building ahead of her.
“Oh, so I don’t really have a choice in this,” I snark as I go inside. “Good to know.”
Aurora looks like she’s straining not to roll her eyes as she steps in after me, then cuts ahead to lead me down the hallway.
She takes me into what looks like the infirmary, and then into a small office that looks like it’s meant for examinations.
“Gee, doc, I’m actually feeling really great,” I tell her.
Aurora sighs. Then she raises her voice, shifting her focus to the wall behind me. “Brodie, if you could please come in?”
I don’t know who Brodie is, but I don�
�t bother asking since I assume I’m about to find out. There’s a slight pause while we wait for whoever it is to enter, and Aurora looks at me the whole time like I’m a puppy that peed on the rug.
Now it’s my turn to barely resist rolling my eyes.
Right, because I’m not allowed to be a little upset about this whole “arrested and detained” thing.
But before the awkwardness can swell to unmanageable levels, the door at the other end of the small room opens, and a young man steps in. He looks to be in his late twenties, around Roman’s age or maybe a couple of years older. Tall, dark blond hair, kind of a scruffy look about him, with weary gray-blue eyes.
I take a small step back. This Brodie guy looks nice enough, but I’ve learned that people who look nice can actually be plenty nasty. Raul seemed helpless and sweet and was my friend. Alyssa looks like a magazine model. Johnson looked like your friendly, lollipop-gifting uncle.
Brodie sees me and gives a small, tired half-wave. He looks like he hasn’t slept much in the past few days, to which I say, hey, join the club.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t arrange for a better location to meet,” Aurora says, stepping forward smoothly, “but I can’t afford to take you off campus. If anyone asks, we’ve been talking to you about your notoriety in the Unpredictable community.”
“Notoriety I didn’t ask for, by the way,” I point out, taking a small step back to put distance between myself and both of the room’s other occupants. “And who is this guy, anyway? Why should I trust him? Or you? What’s this about?”
“You can trust Brodie,” Aurora tells me. “He’s Unpredictable, like you. One of the few Unpredictables working in the government.” She looks at Brodie. “Perhaps you could tell Miss Sinclair what you told me.”
Brodie shifts from foot to foot, looking a little nervous. “Ah, yeah, so… I work in the Circuit. Not a whole lot of people like us in there, like Aurora said. It’s been a bad couple of days, I gotta tell you. The Circuit’s under a lot of pressure to crack down and require magic wipes for all the Griffin students—to just take their powers away from them. Some people are even saying all Unpredictables should be rounded up and purged of magic—even those who’ve graduated. They’re insisting our kind can’t be trusted, students or not.”