And I couldn’t even avoid him on the weekends. I saw him every Saturday for cleaning, because Lisabelle, Sip, and I were still fulfilling our punishment.
“Hey,” said Lisabelle to Keller as we walked up to Astra on the first Saturday in October. Even though it was sunny out, the day was chilly.
“How’s it going?” asked Keller, smiling. He was leaning against the wall of Astra Dorm, but when he saw us coming he pushed off with his shoulders and walked toward us.
“Great,” said Sip. “I passed my werewolf test yesterday. They said I was the best werewolf this year.”
“Hey, I’m the best darkness mage,” Lisabelle added.
“Aren’t you the only darkness mage?” asked Keller.
“Don’t cloud my glory with facts,” she said. To me she murmured, “He’s not dumb. The cute ones usually are.”
“Lisabelle,” Sip chided, “that’s not nice.”
“If anyone ever spreads the rumor that I’m nice, I’ll hit them,” said Lisabelle.
“That’s a great way to handle conflict,” Sip told her.
I was quiet. I was happy my friends had done well on their tests, but I couldn’t help but be upset about my own. Since I couldn’t do magic, I had failed. The result had been a chiding from the professor and a repetition of, “I just have to tell the President about this,” in front of the entire class.
“Sorry, Charlotte,” said Lisabelle, looking over at me.
“It’s fine,” I said. “You shouldn’t feel bad about doing well.”
“Oh, I don’t,” she said, grinning.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Keller. “When the time comes you’ll blow them all away.” The time had already come and gone and I hadn’t, but I didn’t say anything.
We headed into the house. There was no Dash this weekend, so we were going to spend most of the day cleaning. Keller was still assigning where people cleaned. Normally he worked with all of us, but today he sent Sip and Lisabelle to the ballroom. I breathed a sigh of relief. Part of me wanted to go back there, but another part was afraid to. I wasn’t sure if I was more afraid of the artifacts lighting up again when I touched them or of their remaining dark.
“You and I are going to the attic,” he said to me.
“What?” I asked. “Why?”
“Because it needs to be cleaned and I said so.”
“Now you’ve done it,” Lisabelle whispered to me.
“Done what?” I asked.
“Offended him,” she answered. “You should be nicer.”
“Are you seriously trying to give me lessons in good manners?” I asked.
Lisabelle beamed at me. “Just shows you how bad you’ve gotten.” And she walked off. I hated how she always knew the exact right thing to say.
I followed Keller up the stairs. I think it was only five floors, but it felt like hundreds, and after the first couple of flights I stopped counting. I was careful to watch my feet and not his back. The attic was dark and dusty and completely filled with boxes. Somewhere under the boxes I thought I saw beds, but it was hard to tell.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Dorm for the Starters. We need to sweep the floor,” he said.
“It would help if we could see it,” I said.
In reply he handed me a broom. “Sweep what you can see.”
“Can’t we look in the boxes?”
“Definitely not,” he said. He started to move boxes around while I started to sweep. Instantly a large dust cloud came wafting up into my face and I coughed. My jeans and long-sleeved t-shirt were going to be covered in dirt by the time we were done. I had started doing laundry on Sundays, because I always had to wash my clothes from cleaning Astra on Saturday.
“Something wrong?” Keller asked.
“Nope,” I said. I would not complain to him.
“Right. I guess that scowl painted on your face is a happy one,” he said.
I glared at his back.
“You could help me more,” I said. We both knew I wasn’t talking about the sweeping. My anger had been building for the past month, and having Sip done with her Starter test was the last straw.
“How could I do more than I am?” asked Keller quietly, still moving stuff around.
“You’re amazing. You should be showing me magic.” It was out of my mouth before I could stop it.
“You think I’m amazing?” Keller asked. His voice was still neutral.
My face burned. “You know what I mean.”
“No,” said Keller. He had stopped what he was doing and crossed his arms over his chest while he looked at me. “Why don’t you explain it to me? Slowly and in detail, then I might get it.”
“Forget it,” I muttered, and turned back to my broom.
We continued to clean for the rest of the morning. I couldn’t understand why I had come out and said he was amazing. And I couldn’t understand why my eyes always flicked in his direction.
After a while I asked, “Is everyone in your family a fallen angel?” I didn’t expect him to answer. It surprised me when he did.
“Yeah,” said Keller. “When both your parents are, there’s no chance that your kids won’t be.”
“Oh,” I said. “Do you have lots of siblings?”
“Three,” he answered. “I’m the oldest.”
“What’s that like?”
“It’s great, but tough,” he said. “You’re always the first one to do things, or try to do them, and your parents have to decide how they feel about that. I’m supposed to set a good example, and I’m not always sure if I am.”
“So, are your parents hard on you?”
Keller’s interest in answering questions only went so far. “What is this,” he asked, “twenty questions?”
“Sorry.”
“You like having all the information and not giving any out.”
“That’s not true,” I protested. But even as I said it, I realized that Keller was right. I asked questions so that I could avoid getting asked questions. Normally it worked, too. Nothing I usually did worked with Keller, though. “You know more about me than most people.”
Keller didn’t respond to that.
“Can you help me lift this box?” he asked. It was long, and it looked like it might fall apart at any minute.
I dropped the broom and went to grab the other end of the box. What neither of us anticipated was that the bottom had rotted out. As we lifted it the box collapsed, sending us both sprawling on the floor in a shower of papers and journals.
I was about to fall very hard on my shoulder when something strong caught hold of me. Keller was so fast he had managed to catch himself, and me, before either of us hit the floor.
“Are you alright?” he asked. I could see that he was a little breathless, and a slight flush was creeping up his cheeks.
“I’m great,” I said. Realizing that my face was only inches away from his, I pulled away a little. My heart was beating so loudly I was sure he could hear it. He instantly let go of me.
Once he had helped me to my feet I straightened my clothes, then looked at the mess we had just made.
“We were supposed to be cleaning,” Keller muttered. “Not making it dirtier.”
I knelt down to help him pick up the papers. I needed to distract myself from thinking about how I had gone breathless when he touched me.
“What is this stuff?” I asked. Some of the papers were ruined from years of sitting in the attic, but others were perfectly clear.
Keller picked one up and examined it. “I think it’s for Starter elementals,” he said. “All their materials were stuck up here after they stopped being used.”
“Seriously?” I said. I didn’t know why, but I felt a rush of excitement at the idea that all the information for beginner elementals was in my hand.
“Why are you so excited?” asked Keller, frowning.
“I don’t know,” I said. I had no idea why this piece of paper felt like gold in my hands.
“Why were the elementals important?” Keller asked me in his best tutor’s voice.
“For fighting demons, to start,” I said. “We aren’t as strong without all five arms of the wheel. We still have fallen angels, pixies, vampires, and Airlee, but Airlee is getting weaker. Look at Lough. There used to be ten or twenty dream givers at school, and now there’s just Lough and Bailey.
“Without the elementals, our defenses are even weaker,” I continued. “What happens when we lose more?”
Realizing I had just made a speech, I took a deep breath. Without a word Keller nodded. When I heard Lisabelle call my name from downstairs, I must have jumped three feet in the air.
Keller raised his eyebrows at me. “No one’s caught you doing anything bad,” he pointed out. “Yet.”
I rolled my eyes at him.
“What, Lisabelle?” I yelled down.
Suddenly, Keller grabbed my arm. It didn’t hurt, but it came close. “You will show them,” he said. The intensity in his eyes made me keep looking at him. “I know you will.”
I stared at him.
Lisabelle’s voice broke my concentration.
“There’s a runner here that says the President wants to see you,” she yelled.
Keller’s words had given me a high, but suddenly I felt like I was tumbling off a cliff. My heart plummeted. What I had been dreading had come true. The President had called me to her office. She could only want one thing.
I raced away, leaving Keller alone in the Astra attic.
Chapter Fourteen
I thought I was finished for sure, but to my surprise, I left the President’s office with only a small tongue-lashing.
When I just stared back at her in shock after she told me I needed to try harder to perform magic, she ordered me to close my mouth. “I said I’d give you until the end of the semester, and I’m sticking to that,” she said. “Close your mouth. Use Keller. He will help you.”
After that I couldn’t leave her office fast enough; I didn’t want to give her an opportunity to change her mind. Besides, I had a lot to do. I had lost the whole day to cleaning and coming to the President’s office. I had even missed dinner, so now I was tired and hungry.
At least the walk back through campus was quiet. There were few students out, and I had only the rustle of the wind for company. I glanced down at my Airlee ring; I so badly wanted to see it light up with magic, but as usual there was nothing.
I never saw the punch coming.
Camilla appeared out of nowhere. Her face was a mask of fury. “HOW DARE YOU?” she screamed at me. “You stupid bitch!”
I was literally knocked backward. There was a blossoming pain radiating out from my cheek.
I was too disoriented to understand why Camilla was yelling at me. I tried to get away from her and her shrieking, but her four cronies were surrounding me. I had nowhere to go, and I was alone and at the mercy of the pixies.
I put my hand to my face, hoping that the throbbing would stop. I could feel my cheek starting to smart.
I knew Camilla wanted me to be afraid of her. Maybe I should have been, but I decided not to show it. “What’s up, Camilla? Mad you don’t know how to smack someone properly?” I asked. Someday I really should learn to keep my mouth shut. But not now, and not with Camilla.
“Arrgghh,” she screamed as she launched herself at me. I put my hand up to protect myself, but one of her friends grabbed her.
“You can’t hurt her,” Kia cried. “You’ll get in trouble.”
I wondered what Kia called punching me in the face if not hurting me.
“She STOLE him!” Camilla sobbed. “That’s what she’d been trying to do all along, and she did it.”
I hoped that Kia kept holding on, because Camilla looked like she was ready to kill me.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. The pain in my face had subsided into a dull throb, and I lowered my hand more as a way to defend myself against another attack than because my face had stopped hurting.
“You know what I’m talking about! I’m talking about Cale!” Camilla yelled.
“What about Cale?” I asked. “I don’t know anything. Shockingly enough, I have better things to do than constantly worry about your love life, but it doesn’t sound like it’s going well.” I couldn’t help it. She’d just smacked me.
“How dare you?” she snarled, coming eye to eye with me.
“How dare you?” I retorted. “You’re lucky I’m on probation, because otherwise you’d be sorry.”
“Ha ha, Probationer, what’s a mage with no magic going to do?” Camilla asked, laughing in my face. “The President is only keeping you around because she feels sorry for you. Because of your mother.”
“I’m always going to defend myself from a bully like you,” I told her. “And if you ever mention my mother again I’ll kill you where you stand.” That was probably an idle threat, since Camilla could do real magic while all I could do was make sparks that smoked a little, but it sounded good and Camilla seemed cowed.
She had stopped screaming, but her eyes still looked crazy. She came nose to nose with me and said, “You need to learn your place and stay there, Probationer. You are a defect. You are a mage that can’t even do simple spells. You are nothing. In short, you are below wherever I am and you always will be.”
I lost it. It was too much. I had almost just had a good day – yes, I guess I call not getting expelled a good day. Then Camilla had come along and ruined it.
I threw myself at her. She was so surprised she gave a little squeal. I had forgotten how fast pixies were, though. I was cursed to go to a school where the meaning of “paranormal” doubled for “shocking speed and strength,” and they all seemed to have that but me. Well, me and maybe Lough.
I didn’t know what I was going to accomplish, because I wasn’t a big fighter, but I didn’t even get the chance to decide, because Camilla’s cronies grabbed me by the arms and held me back.
“Why did Cale break up with me?” Camilla asked me when I stopped struggling.
Shock must have shown on my face, because she said, “Oh please. I know you knew.”
“I didn’t,” I told her. I bit my tongue to keep from saying that I thought he had made the right decision.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “He said he wanted to see other people, and I see how he looks at you. He looks at you like he’s a helpless puppy.”
I was pretty sure he hadn’t looked at me like that, but Camilla was clearly not in a mood to be contradicted.
“Let her go,” said Camilla. “Obviously she’s just going to be the kind of girl that steals other people’s boyfriends.”
Her friends let me go, but she had crossed a line with that comment. I couldn’t help myself. I said, “No guy gets stolen that doesn’t want to be.”
The next thing I felt was a thwack when the spell Camilla flung at me impacted my chest.
Then there was nothing but darkness.
For the second time in a month I woke up in the Infirmary. Only this time Sip wasn’t sitting on my bed to greet me. Instead it was Professor Zervos.
I wished I could just melt back into the pillows, but it was too late.
He had noticed that I was awake, his black eyes meeting my gray ones.
“Thank you for gracing me with your presence,” he said. His voice was silky and rich.
“Any time,” I said. I could barely see straight my head hurt so much.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Honestly, it’s all a bit hazy,” I told him, which was true.
“Who did this to you?”
“Who did what to me?” I asked.
“Don’t be impertinent, Probationer,” he said. “I know it’s your natural state, but please try to fight against it.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Now, a spell was performed on you, and since you have no magic of your own you were unable to defend yourself. So what happened?”
He didn’t
know who had attacked me. Was I going to tell him?
“I don’t know,” I told him, trying to look innocent. That wasn’t my natural state either.
“Are you trying to tell me that a member of this campus attacked you unprovoked, and you not only didn’t see who it was, but you do not even have a guess?”
“Yes?” I said.
“Charlotte Rollins, you are a terrible liar,” he informed me.
I keep hearing that.
I bit my lower lip. “You know if I tell you it will just happen again,” I said quietly. “You aren’t going to expel them, and they will be mad because they got caught.”
“It’s not their fault you don’t have magic,” said Professor Zeros. “If you did you would have been able to defend yourself.”
“So that I would be the one who got in trouble even though they started it?” I asked, sitting up with a wince. My head felt like it weighed two tons on my shoulders.
Professor Zervos smiled without parting his lips. “I would try to point out the obvious facts to the President: you are trouble and you should leave. And she would likely ignore me.”
“Why are you here, anyway?” I asked. I knew I was speaking disrespectfully to a professor, but he had been nothing but disrespectful to me since the day I arrived.
“I am here because I am the one who found your crumpled and beat up form on the grass outside,” he said, his black eyes still focused on my face.
“Oh.”
“Don’t look so surprised,” he said drily. “I wasn’t going to leave you outside alone and injured. I want you expelled, not dead.”
I was embarrassed that he had known what I was thinking.
“Thanks for the clarification,” I murmured.
Professor Zervos stood up. “Sip is waiting outside. So is Lisabelle Verlans, although why that girl is here is beyond me. She is not your roommate. And she rivals you for trouble-causing.”
Paranormal Public (Paranormal Public Series) Page 12