The Stranger Trilogy Box Set

by Isadora Brown

  Jane could feel her cheeks turn red at the cool, unblinking stare he was giving her. Perhaps she rushed into things.

  His lips curled up but the triumphant smile never reached his eyes. “As I thought.” He proceeded to sit up, but much like a waterfall, Jane opened her mouth and couldn’t stop.

  “I can’t stand Calvin,” she said with more force than was necessary. Jane threw out her arms as though she needed the gestures to make her point. Her feet proceeded to pace the room but she didn’t even notice. “He’s arrogant and egotistical and thinks he’s smarter than everybody else, which, okay, he probably is but that doesn’t mean he’s allowed to make people feel like shit about themselves.” No, she didn’t notice that she swore in front of the Aqua professor, but judging by the way his eyes widened, he certainly did.

  “Did you know that he wants to study us?” She spun around and momentarily ceased her pacing so she could look at him. He still had the same look on his face despite the fact that her voice level was louder than usual and her arms were flying around everywhere. “Like we’re some kind of experiment. Like a study or something. He wants to figure out what we are, break everything down scientifically and write papers on us and become some famous scientist or something so that even panpi would know about us. That has to be illegal, right?”

  As quickly as she began, Jane felt herself deflate. Her mouth hung open as she tried to catch her breath.

  “Are you quite finished?”

  She didn’t want to look at him, couldn’t face those eyes just yet. Jane made a fool of herself in front of the one professor she slightly feared. She was never this open in front of people, and yet here she was, raging against Calvin Joseph to Depogare.

  Depogare!

  Unless she wanted to look like an even bigger idiot, she would stand right there and refrain from running away no matter how badly she wanted to.

  Finally, she was able to shift her eyes from his immaculate oak desk to his face. He was still staring at her, waiting, and slowly raised a brow, silently repeating his previous question. Jane sucked in a breath and nodded once, twice.

  “Tell me, Miss Cabot,” he dropped his foot to the ground in order to lean forward as he continued to look at her, “why do you have a problem with somebody learning the basic components of what makes us peculiar?”

  It took a moment before Jane realized it was safe to speak, that he was asking her opinion about something. “Because,” she said and then swallowed. “Because that takes away from the magic of what makes us special.”

  “You think we are special because we are different?” He furrowed his brow. Jane couldn’t tell whether he was amused by her sentiment or not. She supposed it didn’t matter. “Do all Ignis students idealize every little thing or is that just you?”

  Jane clenched her jaw in order to reign in her patience before responding. “You asked me,” she finally said.

  “Essentially, you’ve wasted my time in order to complain about one of your peers. Don’t you have friends, Miss Cabot?”

  “He’s going to train with us,” Jane pointed out. “I don’t want him using me like I’m an experiment.”

  In one graceful move, Professor Depogare stood up to his full, towering height. He looked down at Jane as though she were a spot on his shoe. “I have to get to lunch,” he said dismissively. “You will deal with Mr. Joseph because you and I have no other choice.” He proceeded to head to his office door. He didn’t have to tell Jane to follow; in fact, she was on the perfectly polished heels of his black loafers. He looked back at her, probably to ensure that she was following him. The professor stopped so abruptly she nearly ran into his back. Surprising her further, he leaned forward so their faces were close. Too close. “And Miss Cabot, have you ever considered that perhaps understanding why we are the way we are on a scientific level proves the existence of the very magic you hope ignorance otherwise produces?”

  Jane was flabbergasted. His voice had dropped a level causing her stomach to flip-flop and his eyes were holding hers with surprising intensity. Plus, she could smell him—something clean, masculine, with a hint of cinnamon—that rendered her speechless for only a second. A second that was enough time for him to leave her standing there, contemplating his question.

  Of course, his question only produced another one: did the great Professor Depogare believe in magic?

  17

  By the time Friday rolled around, Sophie was surprised she was still standing. All week, she and Will had been running around the island. In fact, she probably knew the island better than the students who had been here since Year One. She was also incredibly sore to the point where just walking to her classes was painful.

  Not that Will cared. The first and only time she complained, he told her, “Get over it.”

  Professor Hathaway treated her exactly the same as she had that first day. Sophie wasn’t used as an example again, but the professor had yet to actually apologize to her for violating her trust. By the end of the week, Sophie decided she wasn’t particularly fond of the Anatomy and Physiology instructor.

  Her lessons with Ethan, on the other hand, were the most profound learning experience she had ever encountered in her entire life. The first lesson consisted of simple questions and answers. Sophie learned a lot about herself. Anything Sophie wanted to know about peculiars, he would answer: yes, peculiars lived for an extraordinary amount of time, but Ethan couldn’t say for sure if they were actually immortal; no one knew why some people got the peculiar gene and why some people didn’t, but two peculiar parents produce a peculiar child nine times out of ten; the other living physical Ethan knew of was someone who wanted to take control of society, and it was best that that was all they discussed concerning him; no, Ethan wouldn’t even give her his name; the oldest peculiar he knew was actually himself, having been born in the year twelve hundred twenty-one.

  And then, the question she had been wanting to know but was too afraid to ask at the beginning of the session: “Can you tell me more about Will?”

  Ethan’s clear blue eyes twinkled at her knowingly, yet he answered her question nonetheless. “I found Will in Washington State back in the sixties,” he said. “For the life of me, I can’t remember the specific year, but the man was in bad shape. I don’t think it’s my place to tell you the specifics, but I managed to persuade him to come here. He left constantly, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a few years, but he always came back. I was hoping that I could entice him to stay on more permanent terms by offering him the position of Head of Ignis. At first, he refused.” He laughed at the memory. “To this day, I don’t know why he accepted. But he did, and he’s been here for just over a year, which, for Will, is a lifetime.” He laughed some more. “But he’s taking a surprising liking to you, my dear. Surprising, not because you are unlikable, not in the least! Surprising because Will doesn’t particularly like anyone. He tolerates students but took a training position rather than a teaching one in order to avoid too much interaction with them. But he’s different with you.”

  If he noticed her telling blush, Ethan didn’t mention it.

  Sophie decided to change the subject to other peculiars. When asked about shifters, Ethan explained that shifting into an animal was at the complete discretion of the shifter, except the week of the full moon. At that time, shifters were forced to change into the animal they were bound to for seventy-two straight hours, which was why students and professors alike organized a five day trip to a deserted area near the camping grounds on the island so the shifters could transform in a safe, private environment.

  The topic then turned to mentals and how there were two types. Animus had the ability to read minds while physicus could move objects with their minds. When Sophie asked if it was possible for a mental to possess both abilities, Ethan’s eyes twinkled mysteriously and he said, “Wouldn’t that be something?”

  The next lesson followed the format each meeting with Ethan would now adhere to. It consisted of a forty minute le
cture and a ten minute question-answer portion. Block days saw the minutes doubled. Thankfully, he didn’t assign homework, claiming she had enough on her plate as it was. As long as she took enough notes to assist her for quizzes and tests, he was happy.

  Her tutoring sessions with Jared Bundy were amusing to say the least. The first thing Sophie noticed was that he was human. The second was that he was some former high school football superstar back in the ’80s, something he seemed to cling on to despite the fact that he was in his mid-forties. The reason he didn’t go on to play college football was because he got his high school girlfriend pregnant, got married right after graduation, and now had two grown children. In fact, he was still married—his family lived on the island—but he constantly complained about it. Apparently, he met Ethan when he answered an ad looking for a football coach for an undecided dorm. Football teams never panned out due to the lack of participation, but Ethan kept Jared around, finding odd jobs for him to do. If there was no job, he would sit in a class in order to avoid going home to his stay-at-home wife—though Sophie had the feeling he truly did love her—which was how he was able to gain so much knowledge about every subject taught here. He also believed that soccer wasn’t a real sport.

  Somehow, Jared was the perfect tutor. He was funny and explained everything in a way that Sophie easily understood. He didn’t believe in homework or tests, so like with Ethan, Sophie’s only responsibility was to take notes—not that Jared cared if she actually did so—that would help her with her final exams, one taken just before winter break and one before summer.

  Now, lying on the cool grass in the empty field staring up at the stars, Sophie wanted nothing more than to quiet the buzzing in her head. She had just gotten out of Astronomy but decided to hang around outside where it was silent and she could finally relax. She needed to be alone. Her mind was brimming with more information than she thought was possible. Her right hand was cramped from all the notes she took, her limbs tense from all the running. The staring was still constant, but nobody approached her, talked to her face-to-face. They chose to talk behind her back. The whispers grew louder, but thanks to Jane and Elle and even Will, she was able to ignore them.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  Speak of the devil …

  “I’m looking at the stars,” she told him from her place on the cool grass. She wasn’t exactly lying, though the reason why she decided to come out here wasn’t just to see the stars. She just liked to get out, and hearing the nearby water crash into the shore seemed to help her think.

  Will looked down at her from where he stood and Sophie could tell he wasn’t too pleased with her response.

  “You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he said. His low, gravelly voice was a sound she was now used to, but there were times when it unnerved her, and sometimes, at moments like this one, caused her to get upset.

  “I can take care of myself,” she said, and then pointed out, “I’ve been doing it practically my whole life.”

  He sighed through his nose, and she knew it was one of frustration. Without warning, he took a seat next to her and looked up at the sky. He surprised her further by lying down and saying, “What’s so great about the stars anyway?”

  Sophie’s jaw dropped open, completely appalled. Maybe someone like him, coming from Washington, couldn’t really appreciate stars, but coming from a city in California, she certainly could. Though there were some places where one could see the stars at night, she had never seen them this big before. Not that she’d traveled a lot—only up and down California’s coast—but not even Tahoe had stars these big.

  “Don’t they make you feel small?” she asked him softly. Will always had something to say about something, so it took a while for her to get used to the fact that he was being so quiet right now.

  “I suppose so,” he admitted, and Sophie couldn’t stop the triumphant smile from touching her face if she tried. “Why are you out here anyway?” He turned his head so he was looking at her, but she didn’t meet his eyes. He saw through her at the most inopportune times and she wanted to prevent that right now.

  “I’m thinking,” she mumbled. “I have a lot to take in.” That much was true. This past week had been so incredibly exhausting. She could handle it, but she still needed time to wrap her head around certain things, certain people.

  Though he didn’t reply, she knew he knew she had a point. Instead of admitting that she was right, Will didn’t say anything. But that was enough for her.

  “I did too,” he said after another long moment of comfortable silence.

  This time, she did turn to look at him, but now he was staring up at the sky.

  “How old are you?” she asked him. It was something she wanted to ask him but couldn’t find the appropriate time. She figured now was as good as any.

  “I was born August tenth, eighteen twelve,” he replied, and he met her eye. “I’ve been alive …” His voice trailed off only momentarily while he calculated the number in his head. “… one hundred and ninety-three years.”

  “Wasn’t it lonely?” She hoped she didn’t sound too piteous because Will hated it when people felt sorry for him just as much as she did. But she was still curious and she wanted to know more about Will, about his life. Especially since she just found out he had a lot of living under his belt.

  “At times,” Will said with a curt nod of his head. “My family didn’t know what to make of me, so my father decided to send me to sea. I ended up fighting in every war, though I had to register with a different name. War isn’t a pretty place, but I felt that with what I could do, I had to fight for my country. Love … It’s something I avoided because I knew there’d be no point. Up until I met Ethan in the ’60s, I didn’t know other people like me existed. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I got used to it. I liked it. And now I call this place my home.”

  “This is your home?” she asked him. She wasn’t exactly sure how her question sounded to him, but she knew how she felt when she asked him. Sophie was curious, incredulous, confused …

  “Sure,” he told her, and his voice had that defensive tone it got when one of her inquiries had riled him up. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing,” she said quickly. “It’s just … you said you avoided love because you didn’t know about peculiars. Now that you do know … I mean, don’t you want to fall in love, start a family, that whole shebang?”

  “You do realize I have a long time to do that right?” he asked her, his lips curling up into that smirk he got when she asked a silly question. “No need to rush into a bad marriage. Don’t want kids yet anyway.”

  “Did you know that you’d stop aging at thirty?” she asked, deciding to change the subject. “I mean, I’m seventeen years old. I’ve been around seventeen years. But I like the way I look. Do you think I’ll stop aging now? I think that would be great.”

  “I stopped aging at twenty-two,” he corrected, and she thought she detected a hint of offense in that gravelly voice of his—someone was touchy about his age. “And you’ll look the same when you age a few years as you do now. Trust me. It’s what you see in life, what you experience, that makes you look older.”

  “Then you must have seen a lot,” she quipped and started laughing at her own joke.

  “Oh ha-ha, good one,” he said in a dry voice. From the corner of her eye, she saw him smile as he looked at her, and she felt herself blush. “I’ve never met anyone who actually laughs at their own jokes. I thought they only existed in movies.”

  “You mean you’ve been around for one hundred and ninety-three years and you’ve never met someone who laughs at their own jokes?” she asked, but then looked back up at the stars. “I wish I could say that surprises me, but I’ve always felt that you’re a bit anti-social.”

  “There’s no point in making friends when you know you’re going to outlive them,” he pointed out. “Not only that, but you’re going to watch them die. And you’d have to find some sort of expl
anation of why you look the same as you did fifty years ago.”

  “Okay, I get it,” Sophie said. “I get why you consider this home. You just fit.”

  There was a silence that wasn’t entirely awkward, but there was a pensiveness about it.

  “And do you fit?” he asked her. His voice dropped at least two levels. She wondered if he talked to lovers with that voice because Sophie was sure it had gotten him into a decent amount of pants.

  Sophie paused to think about the question and ended up shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t know yet,” she replied. “I’ve never had a stable home before. It’s kind of scary if you think about it.”

  “You’ll get through it, kid,” he said, and before she realized it, he reached out and took her hand, squeezing it. “You’ve gotten through much worse. And,” his voice was serious now, losing the playfulness that had so recently occupied it, “you have me. And I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

  She smiled. “Promise?” she asked him.

  He grinned. “Promise.”

  Their eyes disengaged and both looked up at the sky but their fingers were still interlocked. It was comforting. It was reassuring. It calmed her, like the sea.

  18

  By the end of the week, Jane wanted to scream. Every time Depogare talked about something, Calvin wanted to know everything about it: how, what, why, who, where, when, and everything in between. Depogare would never admit it, but Calvin was getting to him too. By the time Friday night rolled around, Depogare clenched his jaw before responding to any of Calvin’s questions. It was subtle, and Jane was certain no one else noticed it, but she did.

  Jane thought she had a relatively good handle on herself and was proud that her outbursts against the Texan were far and few between. That, of course, was all thrown out the window Friday night during their last quis training session for the week. Calvin had already gotten on her nerves from the get-go—if Jane didn’t arrive in Numerology before he did, he would continue to sit in her seat—but she continued to remind herself that there were oh so many minutes remaining and then she’d be free. Depogare had yet to actually train them in anything. The entire hour was just a lecture on what was known about quis, but since Depogare was the only known quis besides herself and Calvin, the lectures were one-sided and short. Or, they would have been had Calvin not asked about: Every. Single. Thing.