by Nya Jade
“Time to grab some lunch.”
“I’ve never even heard of this place,” Phoebe said as they walked to the southern end of the greenhouse where a sign overhead said GARDEN CAFÉ.
“On Wednesdays and Fridays they harvest some of the vegetables and offer an organic salad bar with a soup of the day,” Colten explained. “It’s all they serve, though. I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s perfect,” Phoebe said. “I’m a vegetarian.” Not eating the flesh of another animal was the Shaper way; it seemed only natural to honor the fact that they took an animal Shape. A half-smile crossed Colten’s face as they entered the small café.
“What?” Phoebe demanded.
“It’s nice to learn something significant about you,” he answered.
They moved through the salad bar and sat down at a picnic table to eat.
“What else can I learn about you?” he said, his voice low and husky.
Phoebe remembered what Colten had said the first time that they’d met and smiled. “To quote someone famous,” she said, “‘I’m really not that interesting’.”
A flicker of a smile. “Touché.” Colten propped both elbows on the table, resting his chin in his hands and his eyes on Phoebe’s face. “Then tell me three uninteresting things about you,” he pressed.
“Why three?”
Colten shrugged. “Arbitrary number.”
“Okay.” Phoebe shrugged and started counting them off her fingers as she spoke. “I like dictionaries—the older the better—’cause I have a big crush on words.”
Colten caught her gaze. “Lucky words.”
Phoebe’s traitorous face responded with a flush, but she lowered her eyes and barreled on before her words escaped her. “One of my favorite places to hang out is a camera store in San Francisco called Gassers and . . . um . . . and I like being near water.”
“Tell me one more thing—”
“By my count, that was three,” Phoebe said, looking up at him. “Your turn.”
“Yes, but now I want to know something unexpected. Something that no one would guess by just looking at you.”
In her mind, Phoebe muttered, I have two hearts and at some point my second heart will awaken an ancient shape-shifter magic within me. Out loud she said confidently, “I can hot wire any old car in under two minutes.”
“Really?” Colten gave her a disbelieving look that quickly turned to genuine admiration.
Phoebe shrugged as if it weren’t a big deal. “Yeah.” It was a skill she’d picked up because her father constantly lost his keys and had refused to pay for roadside assistance.
“You’re right. . . . I would never have guessed that. So do you carry tools with you and go around boosting random old cars for fun then?” he said teasingly.
“I do carry tools with me,” Phoebe said, her expression serious.
Colten jerked an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Really,” Phoebe said, tapping her backpack. Having her tools on her was habit. “Your turn,” she said, seeing another question forming on Colten’s lips. “Three random things about you.”
Colten rubbed his chin, making a show of thinking. “I play the accordion,” he said.
“Really?” Phoebe searched his face for any signs that he might be kidding. “That’s such an old person’s instrument.”
“Funny you say that,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “I learned how to play from an old man. Ol’ Billy Jones down in the Bayou.” His voice had taken on a southern accent. “He was one of the extras on set when I was down there filming.”
“You any good?”
“Let’s put it this way,” Colten said, speaking in a very confident tone. “I play the accordion as well as I nurture tomatoes.”
A loud snort slipped out of Phoebe. She slapped a hand over her mouth as a few more followed. Embarrassed, she quickly said, “Okay, on to fact number two.”
“I’m allergic to gluten,” Colten said.
“That sucks. Isn’t it in everything?”
Colten shrugged. “Pretty much. But it’s forced me to learn how to cook—I think that counts as my third fact.”
“What?”
“The fact that I’m a great cook.”
“Isn’t that a matter of opinion?” Phoebe said, teasing.
Colten arched a brow. “Guess I’ll have to prove it to you sometime,” he promised.
“In that case, it counts,” Phoebe said.
“Good,” Colten said. His green eyes showed a glint of satisfaction. “Now, back to you—”
“Not so fast!” Phoebe said. “You’re forgetting the important bonus question: Something no one would guess by looking at you.”
Colten leaned back, his teeth gleaming bright in his smile.
“Well?” Phoebe faked an impatient expression and picked up her glass. Just as she took a long sip of soda, Colten said, “I sleep naked.”
Phoebe spewed her drink. It splashed onto her plate, and dribbled down her chin, staining her blouse, but she was too stunned to care. Colten laughed so hard his shoulders shook. Phoebe paled at once. She could feel people looking around at her.
“It seems,” Colten said, when he could speak again, “it’s easy to get a rise out of you.”
Phoebe looked at Colten who was now watching her with barely restrained amusement. She scowled, all the while biting her inner cheek against the stream of salacious thoughts his disclosure pumped through her mind. Thoughts that heated her body. Her pulse raced.
Colten leaned forward and dangled a napkin in front of Phoebe’s face.
“Thanks,” she mumbled.
They fell into a silence then, and Phoebe found herself wanting to open her mental gate to read Colten’s feelings. Being with him made her insecurity flare. And knowing the exact nature of his feelings could potentially soothe that flame down to embers. But she couldn’t shake the idea that it wouldn’t be fair in this getting-to-know-you dance that they were in—her side having such an advantage. She refrained, hastily.
“Back to you,” Colten said. His eyes flickered to the camera Phoebe had set on the table. “Why photography?”
“I don’t like the idea of moments being forgotten,” Phoebe said. “Capturing them allows me to return to the feelings they generated when I first saw them.”
“A personal archive of life moments.”
“Yes.” That was exactly how she saw it.
Colten stared at her with tentative, curious eyes. “How do you feel right now?”
Phoebe swallowed, not sure what Colten was getting at. She prayed that the flush spreading across her chest wasn’t making any vertical movement as well.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
He leaned toward her. “This very moment. How do you feel? Say the first thing that comes to your mind.”
“Flummoxed,” Phoebe blubbered, instantly regretting her word choice when she said it. Really? she thought. Couldn’t go for flustered?
Colten held his hand out. “Give me your camera, word girl.”
Phoebe squinted at him in confusion, but picked up her camera and handed it to him. In a move that was as fast as it was unexpected, Colten moved to sit next to Phoebe, slid his arm around her and drew her close. Phoebe was breathless, her mind spun. Her nose filled with his smoky cinnamon scent, reminding her of the jacket she still had to return. Extending his arm out to hold the camera away from them, Colten took a couple of pictures.
“Now,” he said, leaning back and placing the camera on the bench between them, “when you want to feel flummoxed again, you can take a look at those pictures.”
Phoebe stared at him blankly as he grinned back at her, her brain trying to reengage itself. She didn’t have the heart to tell Colten, that because she didn’t own a simple point-and-click camera, his pictures would most likely be unfocused. “Um,” she said, zipping open her backpack and removing his jacket. “I’ve been meaning to give this back to you. Sorry I kept it a while.”
“I wasn’t worr
ied. It was in good hands,” Colten said, taking it from her and slipping it on. A cell phone rang and Phoebe knew it wasn’t hers.
“Do you have to take that?” she asked.
Colten glanced down at his watch and shook his head. “It’s Nicole,” he said, and quickly added, “she’s my manager, calling to make sure I don’t miss the flight that I’m about to miss.”
“Where are you going?” Phoebe asked a bit too quickly. She bit her lower lip, worried that the disappointment she felt had colored her tone.
“L.A. for a few days. I have an audition and some other business,” he said. “Can I make a request?”
Phoebe hesitated for a moment, “What?”
“If I land the part, would you be my study partner? You know, help me with my lines?”
“Why me? I don’t know anything about . . .” Phoebe’s voice dropped off as she cursed her knee-jerk reaction.
Colten interlaced his hands behind his head and looked at her as though she were missing an obvious point. “Just say yes, Phoebe,” he said standing, his voice soft. For a fleeting moment his face was unexpectedly shy. “It’s a cheap excuse to spend more time with you.”
Phoebe blinked up at Colten. He stood with his back to the glass wall where sunlight pushing through the clouds haloed his tall frame. Her cheeks burned and she struggled to think clearly. “What if you don’t get the part?” The minute those words left her mouth, she couldn’t believe she’d said that. It was official, she thought, she was clearly mental.
“If you say yes, I’ll make sure to get the part.” Colten’s cocky smirk returned, and for a moment, Phoebe wondered if she’d really seen a nervous look flicker over his face. She found herself wishing that this—whatever they were engaging in—wasn’t so easy for him.
Phoebe took a breath. “Yes.”
“Great,” he said quickly, and bent forward to grip her shoulder in a gentle squeeze. “I hate to leave you, but I have a flight to catch.”
Phoebe felt her entire body begin to unwind as she watched Colten disappear through the greenhouse. She picked up her camera and looked at the pictures he’d taken of the two of them. As she’d expected, they were semi-blurred images. But she couldn’t miss that his was an easy expression while her face screamed girl-caught-in-an-overwhelming-moment. Still, “flummoxed” had been the wrong word to describe how she felt around Colten. Or maybe she needed more than one word. One of the correct terms was certainly “happy,” pure and simple. Phoebe found herself wanting nothing more than for Colten to land that part.
ELEVEN
Without Colten to distract her, Phoebe began to obsess about what she’d heard those girls say in the cafeteria. Even more so, she was brooding over the feelings she’d allowed herself to sample from each girl as they’d glowered at her in turn: bitterness and envy. Both with sharp edges and fangs. There was no doubt in her mind that it was her time spent with Colten that drew those emotions out. On some level, she empathized. But to call her unPope-like and imply that she was some kind of slut was going a bit far.
Before long, Phoebe found herself in a deserted hallway she didn’t recognize. The network of hallways in the Campus Below was still confusing to her, and in her preoccupation she’d taken a wrong turn. As she walked, she looked at the portraits along the walls. Gold-framed images of SIS agents of legend shown in both their human and animal forms. Phoebe was just changing direction when a door with the words FACULTY LOUNGE embossed across it swung open at the end of the hallway. Deborah-Anna and Montclaire walked out, talking rapidly in low voices, both looking extremely agitated.
An impulse of curiosity made Phoebe slip behind a nearby support pillar at the very moment Montclaire’s eyes wandered the length of the hallway. Phoebe, working to quiet the sound of her hearts thumping in her ears, concentrated on stretching her range of hearing.
“My point,” Montclaire said, snapping her eyes back to Deborah-Anna, “is that I would consider it a professional courtesy if you brought me into the loop—made use of my expertise.”
The two women had stopped walking and Deborah-Anna stood almost at attention.
“I don’t want to be rude,” Deborah-Anna started. “But—”
“Blackcoats aren’t rude, we’re direct,” Montclaire said bluntly. “So be direct.”
“It goes without question that I think highly of your innovations in the field of intelligence,” Deborah-Anna said. “But as I understand it, your condition—”
All of a sudden, Phoebe couldn’t hear anything more. Confused, she peered around the pillar in time to see Deborah-Anna’s hand moving from the Privaque she’d just pinned to her robes. Phoebe continued watching the women, frustrated that she couldn’t attempt to read their lips without exposing herself. But from what she could see of Montclaire’s expression, the substitute professor was far from pleased with the words coming from Deborah-Anna’s mouth. Her dark eyes narrowed and she folded her arms with a sharp twist of her shoulders. The women stood in a silent impasse, and before Phoebe could begin to think of what to make of it, a stream of chatter erupted from a small group of cadets entering the hallway. A few of them glanced at the women curiously and they backed away from each other slightly, composing their features and easing their rigid postures.
Phoebe held her breath, waiting for the group to pass her pillar so that she could slip among them and hopefully disappear undetected. Deborah-Anna and Montclaire gave each other cordial nods just as Phoebe began casually walking alongside a pig-tailed girl who eyed her with suspicion, then returned to the conversation she’d been having with a friend.
Phoebe hardly knew what to think as she broke away from the loquacious group further down the hall. Montclaire, a Blackcoat? Of course, Phoebe thought as she recalled what Montclaire had said to her after class: “Would you tell me what they’ve told you about the motivation behind the attack?”
Montclaire had not mentioned the word Blackcoat. And clearly, Montclaire didn’t need to talk to the headmaster as Phoebe had evasively suggested. Phoebe shook her head in embarrassed understanding; Montclaire had already been aware of the presence of her own kind.
A few more distracted wrong turns later, when Phoebe rounded the corner to Tactical Bird Song, she heard someone calling her name behind her; slowing her pace, she peered over her shoulder. Hayley, looking flushed, came rushing into sight.
“I have something to tell you,” both girls said at the same time, as Hayley caught up to Phoebe.
They laughed.
“You first,” Hayley said.
In a low whisper, Phoebe told Hayley what she’d overheard between Montclaire and Deborah-Anna.
“If she is one of them, that’s strange they’re leaving her out,” Hayley said in a hushed voice. Then, with a frown added, “I’ll tell you what her condition is: she’s hardcore mean. That whole shock and awe thing with the Vigo-in-a-tank caused a couple of cadets in my section to puke and she made them clean it up in front of everyone.”
“Wow. That sucks,” Phoebe replied, thinking of the girl who had fainted in her class.
They came upon their classroom and found that students had gathered outside of the door reading a bright note that had been pinned to it. A few students exchanged high fives and rushed past them exclaiming “Free period!”
“What does it say?” asked Hayley, who couldn’t see the note over the crowd. “Did she leave us homework?”
Phoebe read: “A last minute conflict requires me to cancel class. We will make up the hour this evening at a Pre-Con Practicum I’m holding in the Floating Gymnasium. It’s located on the lower level of the Athletic Wing. Meet at eight o’clock. Be prompt. Professor Koon.”
“What the hell is a Floating Gymnasium?” Hayley asked.
“You’re asking the Hypha girl?” Phoebe said mock-incredulously.
Hayley laughed. “Right.” She turned and asked the girl behind her who shrugged in answer. “Guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
“What did you have to tell
me?” Phoebe asked, as they left the classroom.
“It’s more something I have to show you,” she said with excitement.
“You have it on you?”
“We gotta go online.” Hayley grabbed Phoebe’s arm and hurried her through the semi-crowded hallway, arriving at the library just as someone behind them yelled, “Hey Pope!”
Phoebe paused, her hand on the glass door she’d just opened.
“Scott, right?” Hayley asked, dropping her voice and nodding toward the boy making his way toward them.
“Yeah,” Phoebe said.
“As much as I want to know what that prophecy hottie wants, I better go snag us a computer,” Hayley said under her breath, stepping under Phoebe’s arm and into the library.
“How was the rest of Montscare’s class?” Scott asked when he reached Phoebe.
“Montscare?”
“Yeah, just made that up,” Scott said, hanging his head, his dark hair falling into his eyes. “Stupid, right?” He tugged on the knot of his navy tie.
Grinning in spite of herself, Phoebe said, “It’s appropriate. So what’s up?”
“Just ran into Mariko,” Scott said. “She wants to use this free period for a hang. I’m supposed to bring you.”
“Where?”
“The graveyard.”
Phoebe jerked an eyebrow. “Isn’t that a bit too foreboding?”
“That’s what I said,” Scott said grinning. “But it’s just a Shaper nickname for what the Above folks call the field behind the old windmill.”
“Oh,” Phoebe said, looking into the library. “Let me finish up with Hayley and we’ll—”
“It’s just us.” Scott gave her a meaningful look. “So we can talk freely,” he added. “See you there?”
Phoebe nodded.
Scott strode back down the hall, hands in his pants pocket, whistling tunelessly while Phoebe hurried to find Hayley.
The Below library was always crowded because it was the main place that Shapers could go to openly do Shaper homework, meet in study groups to discuss upcoming tests, and use the private virtual network that only Shapers could access. Phoebe turned along the aisles of books and located a wall of computers at the back. Hayley had parked herself at the far end of the student-packed row.