by L. A. Banks
Nana Marlene leaned forward. “You said the creature had gray eyes?”
“Yeah.”
The older woman sat back and looked off at nothing. “And a snout?”
“Yes, Nana. It was like half-person, half-wolf.”
Her grandmother closed her eyes. “I have suspected for a long time that students taking contraband into the Shady Path were weakening the integrity of the barriers. We’ve expelled some students from this academy, have purged the portals, and created strict rules about who could enter, and then only with an instructor involved. Apparently more have been sneaking in than we’ve known, and with the addition of drug use, it may have had especially deleterious effects on one student in particular.”
“Nana, that other portal that was opened in Mr. Everett’s room—the one that’s gone now because the uncles shut it down—I could see shadow scratches on the floor where the opening had been.”
“What!”
Sarah shook her head, feeling completely foolish for not thinking to disclose the information earlier. “I thought I was seeing things because nobody else could see it. That’s the way my life has always been—I see stuff other people can’t see and then they tell me I’m crazy. So I kept my mouth shut. Then, when Yaya went missing, we were all hysterical. That was the last thing on my mind.”
“Oh, baby…I know, I know,” her nana crooned softly, grasping her hand. “But if you see anything, anything at all, you have to tell me. It’s vital.”
“When I went to class and Mr. Everett opened up a dimensional moment, I saw shadow scratches on the floor then, too.”
“Dear Lord…” Nana Marlene held out her hand. “Please give me your PIU so I can dry it. Kids are playing with fire, moving vortices around the school and letting in God only knows what.”
The tone of Nana Marlene’s voice was so resigned as Sarah got up and riffled through her wet clothes that there was simply nothing left to say to her. Sarah took the pin off her sweater and tucked it into her robe pocket, not wanting to lose it in the laundry. Being a Shadow meant something. Right now it was the only thing she had left to be proud of. But as she stared at the water-logged unit before handing it over to her grandmother, she noticed that the alphabet was backward.
“Nana, are you sure I can’t get sick?”
Nana Marlene accepted the PIU from Sarah and held it between her palms, causing a warm purple light to surround it as she closed her eyes. “No, child. I told you. Your system doesn’t allow for that.”
“Then how come the letters on my PIU are backward, and I’m seeing blue streaks all over your pretty Oriental rugs, and I feel nauseous. Even that spontaneous zap that hit the mural…I—”
Sarah took two steps, then stumbled and collapsed on the floor.
Nana Marlene opened her eyes at the sound. “You’re seeing shadow echoes?” she whispered, getting up to help Sarah off the floor.
“Huh?”
“Come, child—into my kitchen with you. Tea is in order.” Nana pushed a button on Sarah’s PIU. “You need to read the help notes,” she said. “Each unit now contains a guardian within the crystals. That’s our spiritual version of a GPS. We added that feature after we lost those two Valkyrie students, Peter Matthews and Gregory Duncan, in the woods. Your unit protector is Sarina—Mr. Hubert’s wife.”
Sarina spilled out of Sarah’s PIU in a colorful, coughing haze. “Oh, my goodness—sakes alive, headmistress! I thought those children were going to drown!”
Sarah just stared at the tiny being in the middle of the floor. Her PIU had a genielike little entity embedded in its crystals?
“Are you all right, Sarina?” Headmistress Stone said, her tone worn and somber.
“I believe so, but that was just an awful experience.”
“She did it without you, Sarina,” Nana Marlene said with no small measure of pride in her voice. “Sarah had enough electromagnetic charge on her own under battle conditions to bring the murals to full life. Most of the time not even my most advanced Upper Sphere students can do that. It requires pure white light, laser intent and selfless sacrifice—a willingness to give every ounce of your own life force to save another. Not bad for a Blend…or a Shadow.”
The small multi-hued nymph did the happy dance in the middle of the rug, stamping her teeny-tiny feet.
“She’s also seeing shadow echoes, plus she’s beginning to read backward.” Nana Marlene went to Sarah and hugged her.
“Oooooh…” Sarina gushed, then covered her mouth. “Like the old texts were written in relation to current-day English?”
“Yes, this child is beginning to read in ancient text—from right to left, instead of left to right, as well as horizontally from top to bottom and bottom to top like many of the old hieroglyphics were presented, so please help her in her normal classes when it’s time for her to read assignment or copy notes from the board. This may be a permanent development or it could self-correct, I’m not sure. But Sarah will need your help to navigate through this.”
“She’ll be reading in the Tehuti Library in the capstone in no time! Oh, Sarah, I am so proud.”
“We are proud, Sarah,” her grandmother said, releasing her. “But, Sarina, since she is determined not to divulge who her partners in crime in the hallway were, would you visit those PIUs and help dry them? They’re expensive equipment, as you well know, and the students need them for class.”
“Yes, headmistress,” Sarina said with a squeal, and then disappeared in a rainbow-hued, opalescent streak under the door.
Nana Marlene placed an arm over Sarah’s shoulder and began walking her toward the kitchen. “We will have a cup of tea, over which we will discuss what these new talents that are beginning to bloom truly mean—and the responsibilities that go with them. And you will dwell on what I have said, as well as this very unfortunate incident that you had a hand in exacerbating. I have not even begun to assess the punishment that something so serious requires, but perhaps seeing how quickly things can get out of hand is enough laceration for one soul. I honestly don’t know, Sarah. But I do know that tomorrow at 3:30 a.m., Titan Troy will escort you to your detention—if you are still going to take Professor Raziel’s advice and go. With everything going on, no one would blame you if you didn’t.”
Sarah’s and her grandmother’s eyes met. Sarah knew her nana was so bone weary and so upset that she didn’t have it in her to enforce a punishment that now seemed moot, given all that was going on.
“Maybe not right now they wouldn’t,” Sarah finally said after a moment of reflection, “but in the long run they would. I don’t want them thinking you play favorites. I could care less about what they think about me at this point, but I don’t want them thinking badly of you. I’ll go.”
“If that’s what you want, I will respect your wishes.”
Sarah stopped walking and stared at her grandmother. “I don’t mind doing the detentions. I just want to know how we can make ‘Cinth and the others get better.”
“You can’t do anything, Sarah—and I want you to promise me that you won’t. But the staff here, while holding each student’s life-force in the light, will send a dispatch to find the source of the contagion. And we will be scouring the school to shut down all additional unauthorized portals. We never found the PIUs from the two students who died in the forest, and having those crystal-lit units out there in a den of negativity is of deep concern. They didn’t have a crystal keeper in them like yours does, and we must find them, which will take time—something I fear we don’t have. And all of this while we try to save your friends’ lives and find the missing students.”
Sarah’s room had become the impromptu command center. She said good night to Titan Troy, opened her door and was greeted by an entire cadre of overwrought friends. Tami quickly shut the door behind her and locked it, while Allie and Jessica shushed loudly to bring order.
“What happened?” Tami asked, thrusting a chair forward so Jessica and Allie could make Sarah sit down hard in it
.
“It was all so messed up,” Jess said, not allowing Sarah to answer Tami’s question. “The moment you guys left, we got old Hogan away from the front desk on a phony stables call, then the Upper Sphere crew went in without you.”
“Right. That’s when it got crazy,” Allie said, sounding out of breath. “Hyacinth wanted to help. She could feel something just behind the locked door. I begged her to stay with me and Jess, but she wanted to be a part of the mission.”
Sarah held her head and groaned.
“Now they’re all sick,” Allie said thickly, then swallowed hard, as if holding back a sob.
Jessica cast her gaze around the group. “Who knew everybody would get sick?” she asked in a tense whisper.
“The vortex is booby trapped,” Sarah said, looking up at her friends. “Whoever took Ayana wanted to make sure no one could come through the portal after them. It’s unsafe to go through them unless you’ve got DNA like Razor or my parents.”
“Shit!” Jessica exclaimed, then covered her mouth.
The room fell silent for a moment, everyone wide-eyed, looking at Sarah.
“We know all about Stefan’s attack and the pool murals,” Allie finally said, glancing around. “Tam filled us in. Uncle Richard is at the ER. Pop Shabazz is patrolling the halls in a full shape-freakin’-shift! Teachers are running everywhere.”
Jessica thrust out her PIU. “Look at the broadcast. Stefan Oahspe is AWOL and presumed dangerous due to a viral infection—nice code for werewolf transformation. If any student sees him or knows of his whereabouts, they’re to stay away and call the school authorities. Dude went around the bend is what they should have said. All students are to be behind locked doors until sunrise—nobody can go to pre-sunrise or post-sunset detentions without an escort. The library—the frickin’ library—is closed until further notice.”
“Outdoor excursions are cancelled,” Tami said. “This place is on total lockdown.”
Sarah frantically waved her hands in front of her as though the other girls were a swarm of bees. “Forget all o’ that—how are ‘Cinth and the others? I just wanna hear about that!”
“Keep your voice down,” Jessica warned as a teary-eyed Allie dashed forward and hugged Sarah.
“Ohmigod, Sarah. ‘Cinth almost stopped breathing. She just fell on the floor and started turning gray. All the girls did. Uncle Richard and Aunt Marj—they’re in ICU with ‘Cinth now. Nana Marlene hit the school lockdown alarms, charging all the walls. We thought you might know if she’s all right.”
“What happened when you met with Nana?” Tami asked, talking with her hands.
In fits and starts between short bursts of sobs, Sarah relayed what had happened, what she’d told and what she hadn’t. She didn’t care if her friends were relieved that although the drug operation was common knowledge, their contraband services weren’t. Nothing could stop the heartache of knowing Ayana was missing and Hyacinth was losing life force by the hour, and that Bebe, Darlene, Tina and Andrea were also at death’s door.
None of the petty differences between her crew and Melissa’s mattered anymore, only restoring everyone to full health, and finding Yaya and the others who were still missing.
As the group slowly dispersed and promptly got in trouble with Titan Troy for being out of their rooms without an escort, all Sarah could think about was how she would ever be able to live with herself if even one student died because they were trying to be junior detectives and get even with whatever evil had breached the school.
Life and death put things into context. Tami was lucky to still be her impulsive self. The girl had almost died, and there was something different in her eyes now, even though she’d talked tough in the group. Sarah could see beyond that, though—Tami was rattled to the bone. Just as she and her brother and Val had been. She’d never seen Alejandro so close to tears or heard such raw panic in his voice as when he’d thought Tami had drowned or seen Val step forward as when he’d captured her hand to pull her to safety.
Now the fear in people’s voices, the fear in their eyes, the way they went to bed and then curled up in fetal position was what her dad had spoken of on the stage, the thing they hadn’t really comprehended—how fragile life was, how insignificant most struggles between people were, but how deadly things could be if they went too far. And the aftermath, for the survivors, was a level of guilt so profound that there was no way to ever describe it to another human being.
She drifted in fitful sleep, those thoughts filling her brain as she wished she could find the PIUs, could help find Stefan so he could be purged and saved and helped… wishing that God wouldn’t make this lesson about vengeance so hard and would heal her classmates—all of them—and just let bygones be bygones, chalking this up as a serious wake-up call.
But the Divine must have really been pissed, because when she looked over to Hyacinth’s empty bed she knew the only thing that would wake her up this morning wouldn’t be a miracle, just her three a.m. PIU alarm.
Chapter 27
There was no use lying in bed a moment longer. Her problems weren’t just going to disappear on their own, anyway. Besides, sleep was impossible—all she’d been doing the whole night was tossing and turning, tears dampening her pillow.
Detention also wasn’t going anywhere, and after what she’d been party to, she felt guilty enough to sign up for it all year long…if only that would guarantee a cure for her friends.
Moving as quietly as possible, Sarah pulled on her underwear and a pair of gray sweats and the hoodie that she’d left out on her desk chair to reduce any bumping around in the dark, then she stopped for a moment.
She could see in the dark—not just gray tones like she could before, but with total clarity and even a little color. … Freaky.
It took her a moment to absorb that new reality. She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them again. It was like she was seeing the room through a gray filter that stole most of the color from everything, but she could definitely see. Then, slowly but surely, full color crept into things.
And then the room became a jumble of white streaks, and she had to hold onto the back of her chair and do what Nana Marlene had told her: Concentrate on just one person at a time to see their shadow echo signature without being bombarded by too many at once.
She picked Allie’s signature as a test and watched the white lines buzz around the room from the door to the bed and back to the door, then to the bed, the chair, the desk, the door and finally to the bed again. Sarah closed her eyes. She looked at that energy signature and understood exactly how upset Allie had been. Now all she had to do was breathe quietly for a moment and hopefully the signatures would recede until she called them forward.
Gift though it was, all of this was going to take some getting used to, and she didn’t have time for it this morning.
Her PIU blinked from its spot on her desk. Quickly snatching it up, she saw Wil’s sig and let out a sigh. It took her a moment to try reading the words backward, and then she just held her unit up to the mirror.
Gld UR ok. Hrd whts up.
She texted him back quickly.
Gld UR ok 2—GTG, CU at brkfst
She could only imagine the powwows that must have happened in the boys’ dorm last night; no wonder she hadn’t gotten a call from Wil then…or Val.
Sarah reached for her hiking boots—her sneakers were still damp—and quickly put them on over a pair of thick white tube socks. Remembering the apples in her backpack, which would probably be her breakfast, she shoved them into the hoodie’s front pocket, found her toothbrush, toothpaste and a face towel, and grabbed her PIU. Allie and Tami were still asleep, fitfully twisting in their covers, just like she’d been doing all night.
Quietly opening the dorm room door, she slipped out and gave Titan Troy a little wave. He simply nodded, his expression unreadable. Sarah held up her toothbrush. He nodded again and followed her to the girls’ bathroom, held up his hand for her to stop, entered and ch
ecked around, and then faced the wall, just as he’d done last night when she took a much-needed shower to get the sea water out of her hair.
Sarah let out a sigh. This was so icky—she had to pee. But no way could she do that when he’d hear her. She decided not to think of that while squeezing a glob of toothpaste onto her brush, but when she turned on the water, she had to wiggle and hum a little tune to distract herself.
She brushed more quickly than she’d ever done, followed by a cold splash of water on her face. Finally nature would not be put off for any man or woman, and she had to embarrass herself by leaving the faucet on, dashing into a stall and just doing what came naturally.
Too humiliated, she didn’t say a word or look at Titan Troy as she exited the facilities and walked quickly down the hall to deposit her toiletries back in her dorm room. How could guys be so casual about such deeply personal things? But the giant’s expression hadn’t changed one bit when she glimpsed him from the corner of her eye.
Her PIU sounded, and he swung around so fast that she ducked, fearing decapitation.
“My apologies, Miss Rivera,” he said in an expressionless voice. “My senses are tuned for battle.”
“It was my PIU.”
He nodded. “True, but we must be vigilant.”
She didn’t respond, just fell in double-step with his brisk pace while trying to read a backward text message from Val. The only way she knew it was him was that his PirateNet homepage pic came up. Concentrating hard, she could get the words to slowly reverse themselves. It was a sweet note, really thoughtful. It was the first thing that made her smile in what felt like forever.
Hrd wht hapnd. Got prayers for ‘Cinth. Wntd u 2 C I was up. Didnt 4get2 call u, but
Titan 2 big. C U l8tr.
A soft smile began in her heart and then made its way to her face. She hit the letter K and pushed send, and then jammed her PIU into her front pocket with the apples.