by W. J. May
Alexander Hastings wasn’t the type to play sick.
“That’s right,” Lily said brightly. “I’d almost completely forgotten about Uncle Gabriel. He’d be a fool to show up today. There’s just no way he’s going to be in—”
The friends stopped outside the open door.
“—class.”
There were still a few minutes until the bell, but the room was already bustling. Nothing sparked student attendance like a new campus scandal, and this was one for the books. The buzz of whispered voices was so loud, Aria was surprised she hadn’t heard it down the hall.
And there, sitting in the middle of it all, was Alexander Hastings. He was flanked by Sofia and Eric, both of whom froze the second they walked inside.
A momentary lull fell over the room as the two sides stared each other down. It hadn’t been confirmed, of course, that the shifter was the person responsible. The only thing people knew for certain was that he’d been called in for questioning after a fight in the woods.
But the open animosity between him and Jason was already more than enough to keep the rumors going, and the tension radiating between them now was doing nothing to help.
You wanted him here, right? Aria asked telepathically, startling Jason from his trance. This was your decision. So go to your seat. Everyone’s watching.
He pulled in a quick breath, squared his shoulders, then breezed straight through the desks to his chair in the back of the room. The crowd parted before him like a knife through butter. The only thing that made it slightly difficult was the fact that Lily was still clinging to his arm.
“Kind of cramping my style here, Decker.”
She completely ignored him, glaring Alexander down as they walked past his desk. For once the guy didn’t make eye contact, but that only seemed to infuriate her even more. By the time they got to the back of the room, she was considering lighting his desk on fire.
“Just because you’ve resolved to take the high road doesn’t mean I have to.” She spoke softly enough to keep out the rest of the class, but loud enough for the shifter to easily hear. “I pulled a few helpful tips from my mom’s old interrogation files that might do him some good. Just give me a hair dryer and a nail file, and we’ll see how long he manages to—”
“Miss Decker! What a surprise!”
The class looked up with a start as Dorian Locke breezed into the room, nodding a cursory welcome to his students. His eyes swept over the room once, taking in every detail, before falling on the fledgling psychic with a little smile.
“Aren’t they missing you in advanced calculus?”
Her jaw tightened as she glared holes in the back of Alexander’s head, then she forced her face into a polite smile. “I suppose they are. I’ll see you right after class, Jase. I’ll wait in the hall.”
Jason’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “Thanks, Mom.”
She swatted the back of his head and headed back through the desks, hovering uneasily in the doorway before accidentally catching Dorian’s eye and vanishing with a tight smile. The second the door closed behind her the room fell quiet.
“This is a nice change,” Dorian joked, setting down his bag. “It’s usually all I can do to get you all to stop talking...”
There were no smiles, no laughter. Nothing but creepily attentive eyes. He paused mid-step, looking them over before taking off his glasses with a quiet sigh.
“Well, I suppose you’ve all heard, so there’s no point in beating around the bush. We had a bit of exciting news the other night, and I’m afraid it concerns someone in this very room.”
Aria stiffened in her chair, staring at him in shock. Surely he wouldn’t go into it in front of the class. Didn’t a faculty meeting imply the teachers had been sworn to secrecy?
In the seat next to her, Jason had gone perfectly rigid. Just a few seats ahead of him Alexander sank a few inches lower in his chair, gripping a pencil so hard it had begun to break.
But the rest of the class was spellbound, staring with wide, unblinking eyes.
“No point putting it off any longer...let’s have a round of applause for our Winter Queen!”
It was dead quiet.
Then the entire class burst into laughter.
Aria let out a breath of relief, shooting a quick glance at Jason before rising to her feet with an overly-theatrical bow. The class laughed louder, bursting into applause as she sank back into her chair. Dorian was watching her from the front of the room. Their eyes met for a brief moment and he inclined his head with the faintest of smiles. Her cheeks flamed as she grinned in return.
When it finally quieted down, he got to business—collecting old papers, assigning reading, generally doing whatever teachers did to keep busy when armed with the knowledge that one of their students had recently tried to rip another in half. They’d made it through a good fifteen minutes without anything too terrible happening when, all at once, that luck came to an end.
“—which brings us to everyone’s favorite subject: research papers!”
The class let out a collective groan, wishing very much that he’d forgotten. But Dorian refused to be daunted, perching on the edge of his desk with that signature enthusiasm.
“Now, none of that! Listen, this isn’t your average term paper. I’m not demanding that you pick some old dead person or an ancient war. This year, we’re going to be asking questions.”
“Questions?” Milo repeated incredulously. “What do you mean?”
Dorian smiled, leaning against the desk.
“If I asked you to write me a paper on Napoleon, all it would prove is that you know how to cut and paste things off the internet. You’d be wasting my time and yours. Instead, I want you to think of some burning question, a bit of cognitive dissonance that’s never gone away...and write about that.”
The class stared back at him in confusion.
“You mean, some question we’ve always had about history?” Lindsey asked. “Like why some explorer sailed to this place instead of that?”
“What am I always telling you?” Dorian answered. “We’re making history each and every day. It’s been brought to my attention that these papers of yours usually involve the history of this school. You select a prominent figure and make a report. This isn’t going to be much different, except we’re going to be dealing with very modern history. The things happening right now.”
Aria leaned back in her chair, thinking it over. While she had plenty of questions about the running of the school, she wouldn’t have thought many of them to be appropriate. Then again, it was an interesting suggestion...several things leapt immediately to the front of her mind.
“Like, why did we decide to integrate with the Abbey?” a shifter near the front asked. “Why it took so long for women to be allowed into the school?”
Dorian snapped his fingers with a smile. “That’s exactly it! Pick a question and start from the beginning. Research both sides of the argument. Who stood for what? What was the determining factor? You’re all going to be expected to participate in this government one day. It will help you greatly to understand how it works.”
Benji cast Aria a sideways look, fighting back a grin. Free rein to dig into the sometimes-shady past of the Privy Council? It was a dream come true.
But a dream that came with a catch.
“To make things easier and gain a dual perspective, we’re going to be doing this paper in pairs,” Dorian continued, raising his voice to make himself heard. “Choose whoever you like, then spend the rest of class coming up with a question. Have it on my desk by the time the bell rings.”
It should have been simple. They’d done multiple projects in pairs before. But at that moment, the class came together in one of those rare moments and decided to do something cruel.
Like clockwork, one person turned to another—pairing off so strategically and quickly, that by the time the friends saw it happening it was already done.
In the end, there were only three people left. A n
atural pair, and the odd man out who demanded placement all the same. Aria closed her eyes with a sigh. She should have seen it coming.
“Milo and Henry,” Dorian murmured, moving down the rows and scribbling names down on a clipboard. “Maddox and Trisha, and...and the three of you.”
He stopped where he stood, staring down at them in surprise.
“I’m sorry...I wasn’t expecting that.”
Aria sank a few inches lower in her chair, glaring fiercely at whichever students peeked around to see if their plan had worked. No one was brave enough to look at her directly, but the result was the same. She, Jason, and Alexander would be writing a research paper together.
And let the games begin...
Chapter 7
Dead. Quiet.
The rest of the class was busy working—rather, they were busy gossiping about what might be happening in the back of the room and laughing under their breath. But the three desks pushed against the far wall were dead quiet. The people sitting in them were statues. No one took a breath.
Bloody perfect.
Aria’s eyes flickered over Alexander’s shoulder, scanning the room for the familiar splash of red hair. Usually, she could count on Benji to save her from things like this. Usually, it would have been implied. But today, she was shocked to see that he might need some saving of his own.
Not only had he been sequestered off to the opposite wall, but he was sitting with the most unlikely of partners. Even with her back turned, Aria recognized the glossy sheet of espresso hair.
Her eyes narrowed as the two friends locked eyes.
Traitor.
He didn’t need saving after all. He was perfectly content with his choice of partner, even if she had recently dragged him across campus disguised as a jungle cat.
“This doesn’t need to happen,” Alexander said quietly, pushing back his chair. Aria looked up in surprise to see his eyes glued to the desk. “I’ll ask Locke if I can just do it on my own.”
A retreat if ever she’d seen one. Only, there was nothing of surrender in the way Alexander was speaking. It was more like he simply didn’t know what to do. His skin was flushed, his hands were trembling, and he had the same manic expression as that first moment Jason had cleared his name.
“He won’t let you,” Jason said shortly. He was casually avoiding eye contact himself, tracing the edge of his notebook. “And even if he did, it’s not like he could explain why if anyone asked.”
The shifter pulled in a breath, trying to keep steady. “You two pick something, then. I’m cool with whatever you want.”
Another retreat. This one was even more noncommittal than the first.
Aria glanced between them for a moment, then lowered her gaze. Yes—this was going to be excruciating. But since they’d been given no other option, the best thing to do would be to hunker down and get through it as quickly as possible.
Her mind raced as she tried to come up with a suitable question. There were so many to choose from, but in the context of a school paper that list shrank dramatically. The first question was the most obvious—one she was sure both Benji and Jason had already thought of themselves.
How were their parents able to defeat Vivian? What secret weapon tipped the scales?
Since they were children, they’d been asking the question. Ever since they heard the story about the day the skies of London rained down fire and ash. There were so many accounts, they’d been able to glean a wealth of information. From random agents, to old alumni, to the occasional case report that hadn’t been redacted beyond belief.
Their grandparents had quartered off the city, standing like unmovable sentries at each major point of entry. Their parents had led the charge, scaling the sides of buildings and racing down the streets. For the first and only time in history, powers were used out in the open. The two worlds had blended together, one uniting to save the other from ruin and death.
And that is where everything got murky.
Because amid the heat of the battle, their parents suddenly left. Because when Vivian’s forces rallied, they returned by themselves to the waterfront to make a final stand.
There was no way they could have defeated her. Even with all of them standing together, they were so outnumbered there was simply no way they could have survived. And yet...they won.
Their kids asked a thousand times, a thousand ways. From yelling, to sneaking, to bargaining, to flat-out begging to be told the answer. But on that solitary point, their parents wouldn’t budge.
And since they were the only ones who’d been present, the secret was theirs alone to keep.
Yes, that was the question Aria wanted to ask. But it was a question without an answer.
“Ah, come on. You must have questions about this place.” Jason lifted his head suddenly, looking at Alexander for the first time. “After all, you just got here.”
The shifter’s lips parted, but he could think of nothing to say. One hand was gripping the spokes of his desk. Tiny pieces of metal had started to chip away.
“Let’s just do something basic,” Aria muttered, levitating a pencil out of her bag. “What about the fire? There has to be something there—”
“What about security?” Alexander interrupted, recovering his stride. “This is supposed to be one of the safest places on earth. What about asking how someone was able to get away with murdering a teacher in the middle of the night?”
A shocked silence fell over the desks as he leveled Jason with a hard stare.
“I know you think I did it.”
The pencil snapped in Aria’s fingers, but Jason held his gaze without a trace of fear.
“Would that be so unlikely?” he asked softly. “We all know what you’re capable of.”
Not good, not good, not good!
Aria’s eyes flickered across the room to Dorian, but he was leaning back in his chair—legs perched on the desk as he studied a book in his lap with a faint frown. While there were several other people secretly watching, none of them wanted to help. Quite the contrary, the mystery of what transpired the night of the dance had reached critical levels, and they were eager for something to break. That left Benji...who was bent over his paper, oblivious to the world around him.
Short on allies, Aria turned to Jason herself.
Back off, she warned telepathically. You want him to rage out again in the middle of class?
Jason met her gaze, but only smiled. A second later he turned that smile to Alexander.
“You have a protector.”
The shifter followed his gaze with a furious scowl.
It seemed that at some point while he was bleeding out in the forest, Jason had discovered exactly how to get under the guy’s skin. Why he would want to was another question entirely. But with the skill of a puppet-master, he leaned back to appreciate his work.
“Back off,” Alexander fumed, unintentionally mimicking Aria’s exact words right back to her. “I don’t need your help.”
Jason shrugged casually. “I think you probably do.”
Aria forgot the shifter entirely and gave him a cold glare. “I think you’re going to find yourself back in the infirmary if you aren’t careful.”
He flashed a charming smile then leaned back in his chair, fixing the shifter calmly in his sights. “I only meant it wouldn’t be hard to imagine.”
“What—”
“You killing someone in the middle of the night.”
Alexander went perfectly rigid, like he’d received an electric shock. His eyes darted nervously to the people sitting closest before returning to Jason with a look that was hard to describe.
“What are you saying?” he asked quietly.
Yeah, what ARE you saying?
“I’m saying that I did think you might have something to do with Dorf,” Jason replied evenly, never breaking the man’s gaze. “...but I don’t think that anymore.”
If it was possible, Alexander looked even more surprised. He gripped the sides of the desk
, almost like he was battling a physical state of whiplash, before shaking his head.
“Why not?”
Jason glanced up distractedly, as if he’d forgotten they were even talking. “He was killed quickly, wasn’t he? A simple snap of the neck.” His blue eyes locked on Alexander’s dark ones before drifting once more around the room. “I don’t think that’s your style.”
That was the last time either boy spoke for the rest of the period.
Grumbling under her breath about the dramatic tendencies of men, Aria proceeded to work on the project by herself—picking a random question about the construction of the school and sketching out a vague outline of the research it would entail. Her nerves were jumping and her mind was racing with other things, but unfortunately she had nothing but time.
After about forty minutes, she could stretch it out no further and dropped the pencil on the desk. Throwing bored glances around the room while silently lamenting her own misfortune.
Having grown up together, most of the Guilder student dynamics had been long since written in stone. When they were divided into pairs, you already knew who everyone would be choosing. But the addition of the three shifters had made for more than one interesting match.
Leona Wross, a shy girl with the power to bend sound waves, had been too slow on the draw and found herself sitting across from Eric Lach. From the looks of things, he was no more talkative one-on-one than he was in a group. They’d finished the assignment quickly and were sitting in perfect silence, both trying their best to ignore the other.
With an entire class of witnesses seated safely between them, Aria studied him closely—eyes sweeping over the sturdy legs. The rippling muscles. Now that she knew his secret, it wasn’t at all difficult to imagine him as a lumbering bear. She wondered why she hadn’t guessed it before.
Leona caught her staring and rolled her eyes, jerking her heads towards him as if to say, “Can you believe my luck getting stuck with this guy?” Aria flashed a sympathetic smile, cocking her head towards a problematic shifter of her own.