by Lucy Auburn
How come I didn’t see her weirdness before? Normally when someone looks like that to my eyes, they always look like that. I’ve never seen it turn off and on.
“Get out of the way.” A hand tugs on the back of my dress, and I stumble back to see the impossible behind me: a girl even smaller than me, nowhere near five foot tall but for some reason wearing a tight black fighter’s outfit. She glares up at me with narrow eyes, like she doesn’t know how tiny she is. “You’re going to get yourself hurt.”
Then she runs straight towards Creeper with a knife in her hand.
I stumble back some more, behind the cars, as the gun goes off a few more times—and misses its target. Somehow hoodie guy, not-drunk girl, her boyfriend, and whatever tiny human that just was, are moving faster than my eyes can keep up with. One second they’re here, the next they’re there.
It’s impossibly confusing, and Creeper can’t hit a single one of them with his bullets. Within moments, they’ve disarmed him, pushed him face down on the ground, and tied him up with a length of rope. They gag him and pull him into the alleyway, tied up like a trussed turkey.
The club bouncer further down the block doesn’t even blink; the cars lined up to pick people up and drop them off idle casually in the street. No one cares that a bunch of young adults with nunchucks and knives somehow overpowered a well-trained dude with a gun.
Just when I’m thinking about running down that alleyway again, I hear a song. It’s so quiet that I don’t know how I pick it up over the sounds of the city streets and the booming bass coming from inside the club, but I do.
A haunting melody. One that wraps me in its warm embrace and makes me feel like everything is okay, no matter what happens
The four fighters approach me, but I barely hear their murmured words of reassurance, I’m so fascinated by the song. They got the bad guy; I’m safe now.
I just want to hear more of that melody. And somehow, it’s louder and clearer when they’re near me.
I’m so wrapped up in all of it that I forget to run, especially since it happens so fast. They move faster than you can blink. Which is how I find myself with the drunk girl’s boyfriend on one side and hoodie guy on the other, each of them gently cupping my elbows and guiding me across the street.
For some reason I want to go with them; for some reason, it doesn’t occur to me to fight.
I’ve never been so docile in my life.
“Sorry about this,” hoodie guy says. “I’m Liam, by the way, if that helps.”
I stop in the middle of the crosswalk, blinking off the fog that’s somehow settled around my mind. “Wait a minute, what’s going on?”
They frown at me. Not-drunk girl says, “You two sure you got the frequency right?”
“I checked the calibration on our way over,” says the not-drunk girl’s not-boyfriend. “It’s perfectly attuned.”
“Turn it up,” she says.
I’m about to open my mouth to ask them what the fuck and get your hands off me when the song wraps me up again. It’s so nice; listening to it makes me feel like I’m snuggled tight in the warm embrace of a tight quilt, tucked in by my mother, and dreaming good dreams. I let them take me across the crosswalk, to an Indian grocery store somehow open late at night, full of the scent of spices yet empty of any shoppers.
The song keeps up its comfort.
Like my mother’s embrace.
Like her reading me a bedtime story.
I don’t have a mother like that and I never did. I jerk out of the weird brain fog a second time, angry about whatever is going on even though I don’t understand it.
“Hey!” Jumping away from them, I put my back to a shelf of dry goods and try to ward off the sound. “I don’t know where you’re taking me, but I’m not into it. Thanks for saving me back there and all, but no thanks to the weird hypno bullshit.”
Eyes wild, I back up and try to slip away, watching the three of them closely.
Three of them. It’s not until I’m right near the doors that I realize I forgot all about the tiny girl who hopped into the fray towards the end there. I back right up into her, whirl around and stare into her narrowed eyes.
“You have to come with us,” she says, like it’s some kind of rule or something. “It’s dangerous out there for you. So just make this easy and do what we say; it’s what’s best.”
Hell no it isn’t. I’m not a wide-eyed, naive little girl and I never was. Scowling, I step around her and head towards the doors, certain I can get past her despite the fact that she and her friends somehow beat up that guy with the gun.
But when I’m almost at the door, I look out and, for a moment, see them again.
The four hot murderers, the ones who I somehow know are demons instinctively, who I ran through with a stolen motorcycle and keep randomly seeing ever since then. They’re standing in the middle of the crosswalk we just used, arguing.
Cars are going right through their partially translucent bodies.
And they don’t even blink.
That song starts up again from behind me, only this time it’s different. The sound of it, childish and annoying, gets on my nerves—and beneath it, I can hear the four fighters arguing about something in whispered tones. When I glance at them they’re all standing in a circle, holding a small disk out between them and fiddling with it.
“—can’t just let her leave!”
“You saw that, she—”
“It’s our duty. And that’s the wrong frequency, just change it back to what it was.”
“Enough of this.” The short girl walks towards me, hands on her hips, staring me down. “We tried the easy way. Time for the hard way.”
“What is this, a movie starring the Rock?” I scoff at her. “The ‘90s called, they want their cliches back.”
I turn towards the door, certain I can make the few steps to it, push out, and get away with my street smarts.
But in a flash, there’s a growl. A creak. A groan. And something streaks right past me, snarling on all fours, impossibly huge.
There’s a wolf in this Indian grocery store.
I freeze, stunned. It rears back on its hind legs, puts its feet on my shoulder, and growls right in my fucking face.
That’s not the weirdest part. The weirdest part is this: every part of my dumb, animal lizard brain is screaming at me that this is the short girl, looking at me from a wolf’s face, warning me with a wolf’s teeth.
Impossible. But somehow, true.
“Alright,” I manage to choke out, surprised my voice even works. “I’ll go with you guys. I guess it’ll save me the money for a hotel room—assuming we’re going to the second location where you finish the job that other guy started, I expect at least a good night’s sleep before I die.” Again.
There’s a flash, followed by a shimmer, just like that energy field I’ve seen a dozen times tonight, the optical illusion of a person that’s also something else. Then, instead of a wolf standing in front of me with its lips peeled back to show off its huge, sharp canines, that short girl is back, her arms stretched up to touch my shoulders.
Just like the wolf.
If this is what madness feels like, I guess it was inevitable for a street rat like me.
“Good. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m glad you’ve finally accepted the first step in your journey,” she says, like that hippie nonsense makes any sense at all. “I’m Petra. With our luck, I’ll be your assigned Shield.”
The way she says it, the word sounds important. But I don’t have time to figure it out; I’m tired, and I just want to sleep, however the night ends.
“C’mon,” Petra says. “Follow me.”
As I walk through the aisles of the grocery store, the music fades away, and the other kids introduce themselves—or reintroduce themselves, in Liam/hoodie guy’s case.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” he says, and I mostly believe him. “Just the opposite. The moment you were activated, we were assigned to make sure nothin
g bad happened to you. I’m Liam, just in case you uh, missed it earlier.”
The Asian guy who dealt with racist Creeper sticks out his hand, and I take it, eyebrows raised at his weirdly eager politeness. “I’m Sam—Sam Leong. You’re my first baby phoenix! I’ve never met one so new before.”
I nod at him, like that makes any kind of sense. Just go along with it, my senses are telling me; just let them do what they’re gonna do. They’re no danger to you, and you’re really ready to sleep now.
“And I’m Olivia,” not-drunk girl says, pulling her light brown hair back into a ponytail. “That was a close one out there—sorry about that. We were looking for you in the bathroom when that guy got you.”
“It’s my fault,” Liam explains. “I somehow lost you in the crowd.”
I must be out of it, because I actually confess to him, “I gave you the slip when I noticed you were following me.”
The others seem surprised at this; maybe they’re not used to meeting wary foster kids who are good at getting out of sticky situations.
Petra stops in front of a door to the back, one marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. I guess she must count herself one, because she’s got the door open a few inches, though she’s looking back at me expectantly. “Well?”
“Well what?” I shoot back, still unnerved about the whole tiny girl is a wolf thing.
“What’s your name? We told you all of ours.”
I guess, between the tailing me, saving me, and somehow hypnotizing me into following them here, it didn’t occur to me that these four, whatever or whoever they are, don’t know my name.
“I’m Dani. And yes, it’s short for Danielle, but no, you can’t call me that.”
Sam holds up his hands, playacting like I’m holding a gun to his head or threatening him or something. “Wasn’t gonna.”
“Nice to meet you, Dani-not-Danielle,” Petra says as she pushes open the door. “Welcome to the Phoenix Academy. It’s time for your second life to begin.”
Her words echo through my mind as she leads us through a storage room in the back full of stacks of cardboard boxes. The storage room leads to a back part of what must be some kind of kitchen, full of industrial sinks and the smell of fish guts.
Second life.
Phoenix Academy.
None of it makes sense, but I’m all out of mental willpower and don’t know what to do except follow her. Through the back door of the kitchen is a tall, walled-in area with industrial-sized dumpsters and a couple of trucks parked under street lamps. The gate on one end is locked, with electrical wire running through the walls and a big sign screaming DO NOT ENTER. At least ten feet high, the walls are imposing, and seem a little much for the offloading area of an Indian grocery store.
But, as I’m starting to realize, not everything is as it seems.
Especially tonight.
Petra heads to the back wall, where a small, unassuming gate is latched. She flips up the cover to a keypad, inputs a long code, then leads forward for —
“Is that a retinal scanner?”
They all look at me. Seeming to take pity on me, Liam says, “Security is important at the academy.”
I blink at him, mind whirring. “So you guys go to some special school?”
Second life. Phoenix Academy.
Sam says, “Something like that.”
Rolling her eyes, Olivia sighs. “Just tell her already, guys. Why wait for Headmaster Towers’ orientation? She’s gonna be confused all night.”
“Tell me what?” I stare at them, then cross my arms over my chest. “Look, I came along with you because honestly, tonight has been really scary and—” severed dick, “disturbing, if I’m honest. That guy tried to kill me, you guys got me out of trouble, and well... Petra is... a little intimidating.”
Liam snorts. “To say the least.”
“But I’d still like an explanation before you take me to a second—or in this case, third location. You know what they say about second locations.”
“We told you, we’re not going to kill you.” Tapping her toes, Petra sighs. She’s got the door propped open, and her eyes are on the keypad, like she expects its blinking green light to turn red any second. “Just follow us through this door, and we’ll explain everything. It’ll make a lot more sense on the other side—and we’ll have privacy.”
“Why do you need privacy?” I ask, furrowing my brows.
“Because.” Turning towards me, Olivia gets my attention in a flash as she suddenly shimmers from head to toe, her light nearly blinding to my new, sensitive eyes. “We’re shifters, and we’ve been trained from childhood to protect phoenix like you.”
Somehow, Olivia vanishes. But that’s not all; all of a sudden, there’s a hawk hovering in the air right where she was, its wingspan wide and beautiful. It swoops towards me, dives around my head as I duck in alarm, then shimmers and turns back into Olivia again.
Petra says, “I know I started it, but we shouldn’t be doing that on this side of the wall. Get moving already.”
Grabbing my hand, Olivia tugs me—dumbfounded expression and all—through the door after Petra. Liam and Sam are hot on our heels, just as the door starts beeping in alarm; they kick it closed, and the beeping stops.
On the other side is something impossible, something I would’ve seen over the top of the wall, but that’s somehow appeared out of thin air.
A school, Gothic in style and seemingly as old as the city itself, at least three stories high and nearly half a city block wide, sprawling across expansive grounds that are dotted with other, smaller buildings nestled in the trees.
“Like I said,” Petra calls out, “welcome to Phoenix Academy.”
Chapter 6
They’re nuts, I’m insane, we’re all living a psychedelic dream. I’ve died and gone to some kind of terrible hellscape. The Fern Valley Kids really did drug me, and I’m having the worst trip of my life.
These are all explanations I run through in my head as Petra leads me down the long, winding path through a wide courtyard towards the front steps of the academy, which are drenched in moonlight and lamplight alike.
“This is the Great House,” she says, pointing up at the, well, really big house-like structure. “It’s where the dining hall, most of the classrooms, teachers’ rooms, and incoming student dorms are.”
“Cool,” I tell her, while in my head I’m thinking this isn’t real, you’ve snapped Dani, totally snapped.
There’s got to be an explanation.
But each explanation I come up with has a counter, like: I don’t think I imagined those poker games, or have a sick enough brain to hallucinate Richard getting his junk yanked off. If this is hell, it’s a pretty lame version of it, and I feel very alive.
And though this all seems crazy, though none of it is what I expected...
In a way, I’ve always known I was different. Strange. Had a screw loose.
Since I first figured out that most kids can’t sense a person’s next move whenever they want, or see people with shimmery edges, or throw themselves into a crowd with precision and avoid every single obstacle with lightning-fast reflexes, I’ve known that I was an outsider.
The kids at the group home never let me play cards, board games, or video games with them; they all claimed I had to be cheating because of how easily I won. Even in a sport like baseball, they were wary of what I did, how easily I gamed the system. They all said it didn’t make sense, that the things I said were nuts.
Normal kids don’t claim they “sensed” which way the pitcher was going to throw the ball.
Normal kids don’t know what number the dice will roll at least three turns ahead.
Normal kids most definitely don’t babble nonsense about people with strange, there-but-not-there edges that look like optical illusions. When I said that the lady in charge of the group home had a “bad spirit” inside her, the other kids told on me and I got put on drugs so heavy they dragged me down into sleep and dulled my senses. I had to run away
just to start feeling normal again.
So yeah, I’ve always been weird. But I didn’t think weird came with a Gothic academy that has ivy growing up the trellises, like we’re somewhere besides the coast of Northern California.
“Wait a minute.” I look around at the four of them, test the air with my fingers; it’s autumn, but even so, it feels cool here. “We’re...”
“Not in Kansas anymore? Or more specifically, Santa Cruz.” Sam gives me a brilliant smile. “Exactly right. We’re somewhere here but also there at the same time. Cool, huh?”
I don’t explain that they’re the ones who consider that other place Santa Cruz; to me, it’s just the streets I’ve known, the places I’ve staked out, the food I’ve fought for. I never really thought of it as any city in particular; it could’ve been any place at all. It was closest to where Sara lived, and that’s all I ever let myself think or feel about it.
Santa Cruz, the city, was a place for people with a permanent address and bills to pay lived. To me, the streets could’ve been anywhere at all. So I guess it doesn’t matter if we’re not quite there anymore.
Stopping at the bottom of the steps, Petra turns to me, and clears her throat as if she’s about to give a speech. “You wanted an explanation. Well, to sum it up quickly so we can get your room assignment and all go to bed: we’re all students here, at the academy, which you may have noticed is a bit magical. And we’re all shifters.”
The other three wave at me awkwardly, like I wouldn’t have known it was them she was talking about otherwise. Shifters. Okay. They certainly do seem shifty at the edges.
Petra continues, “You’re a phoenix, which is kind of like a shifter but also nothing like one at all. The instant you died and came back to life, a beacon went on,” she points to the very top of the building, where there’s a little spire, “up there, and we were on duty. So we had to drop everything and come find you.”
“Night duty is the worst,” Sam says. “We didn’t expect anything interesting to happen, so it was a big surprise when you were activated. No one even had you on the list.”