“Or did you like being saved, Alex?”
Alice pushed one finger against his chest playfully.
“It makes things a whole lot easier, when you are the victim. Everything is black and white, and nobody ever expects anything else from you.”
Alex pushed her hand away, clearly annoyed.
“Of course not,” Alex said, his voice trembling. “I didn’t want any of that stuff to happen. But it isn’t like I had any options.”
Alice stood up and smiled at Michael triumphantly.
“And if he gets his way,” Alice said ominously, pointing at Michael, “that’s exactly how things will stay. You’ll never have any options. You’ll never be able to protect anyone, Alex, not even yourself. Instead, you’ll get to watch your friends die protecting you.”
Michael’s fist slammed into the door frame, causing everyone but Alice to jump.
“No need to get pissy,” Alice said lightly, rummaging briefly through her coat pocket before coming up with a folded piece of paper. “I already talked to Alistair and got permission. You keep training him however you like, Michael,” she said, eyes sparkling. “I’m going to have Mitzi put him through the Program. Out of your jurisdiction.”
“Not a chance,” Michael said firmly. “I’ll go over your head, straight to the Director if I have to.”
“Then go talk to Gaul,” Alice said, shrugging. “He’ll back me on this. We all know that this is too personal for you to make an impartial decision.”
“Uh, what Program?” Alex asked softly, afraid to actually interrupt. “Is that bad? Am I in trouble?”
“Alice, you’re insane,” Michael growled. “Rebecca, say something.”
Rebecca smiled ruefully.
“Actually, I’ve been talking pretty much the entire time…”
Rebecca trailed off when she realized that no one was listening to her. Alice dropped the paper on the floor in front of Michael, shrugged, and started for the door.
“It’s quite simple, Alex,” Alice said over her shoulder. “You can do things Michael’s way. You don’t have to make a choice. But, if you want out of the Program — and you will — then I suggest you find a way to impress me with your personal development. Because it doesn’t end until I say. And I won’t say, until you’ve learned to take care of yourself, at the very least.”
Alice turned back towards the door, and motioned for Michael, still frozen, one fist pressed up against the door jam, to stand aside.
“Move it, Mikey,” Alice said, jerking her thumb to the side. “I’ve got things to take care of.”
“Thanks for stopping by, you guys,” Rebecca hinted.
Michael’s arm didn’t move, but his hand reddened where it pressed against the old wood of the door frame.
“Have to go practice being a cunt?”
Michael spoke through gritted teeth, his arm falling reluctantly to his side.
“You think I still need practice?” Alice asked, smiling as she squeezed past him and out into the hall.
Twenty Two
Emily had her hair up in curlers, and was about halfway done with her eyebrows, when Margot came into the otherwise empty dorm bathroom, wrapped in a bathrobe and looking like she had just woken, and wasn’t too pleased about it, a yellow plastic basket with her toiletries hanging from one hand. She walked over to the long faux-marble counter and set her stuff down on the sink and mirror combo next to Emily’s, giving her a nod. Emily smiled at her and then went back to tweezing her eyebrow. She waited until Margot had started taking the top off a bottle of facial cleanser before she snuck a look at her halo.
There were all sorts of ways, as Emily understood it, for empaths to realize their talent. Some of them saw emotions as colored auras surrounding people, others heard music associated with a specific emotional state, while some particularly unlucky empaths even experienced a mirror-image of the emotions that they sensed around them. Emily, being only moderately unlucky, saw what she called halos — a roughly circular hollow ring of colored smoke that floated above people’s heads. She couldn’t see them all the time; she’d had to learn how to look them, and the halos were even more difficult to see here at the Academy, where almost everyone had been taught to resist such things. But, if Emily tried hard, most the time, she could see it, at least a little bit.
Margot’s halo was thin and reedy, almost broken in places, but that was normal for her. Her halo was a uniform grey-blue, which in Emily’s own personal interpretation, indicated either apathy or a tremendous ability to control her emotions. For Margot, this too was normal.
Then Sarah came breezing in, greeting both of them cheerfully and then walking over to the sink on Emily’s opposite side, the tiled space echoing with the sound of her sandals. Emily didn’t even have to check Sarah’s halo; as always, it was a ring of pulsating rose-pink light, which for Emily indicated optimism, good will and excitement, which was Sarah’s default emotional state. But there was something a bit unusual about it, in that it was shot through with the silvery metallic tone that Emily associated with curiosity, curiosity she was certain was directed at her, when she noticed Sarah glancing over while she got her hairbrush out.
“So,” Sarah said, her eyes locked on the hair she was brushing as if it required her full attention, “when were you going to tell me about your little date with Alex?”
Emily did her best to look composed. She’d guessed at the source of her curiosity, of course, and she kind of did want to brag about it. Only kind of, though, because it hadn’t gone exactly how she’d hoped. Then she saw herself in the mirror and realized she was blushing, and that made it all worse.
“We didn’t go on a date. I made him dinner, that’s all.”
“At your house,” Sarah offered, smiling eagerly.
“At my parent’s house,” Emily corrected.
“But, they weren’t there, right?”
“How did you know that?”
Sarah waved her hairbrush dismissively.
“I didn’t think you’d invite Alex over to meet your mom on a first date. Come on, tell me, how was it?”
Emily put away her tweezers, and then started to carefully remove the curlers from her hair, one at a time. She hoped her hair came out looking alright, because sleeping with the curlers in had been a pain. The Raleigh Cartel’s precognitives had told her that Alex would like her hair better this way, so she’d been dutifully curling her hair since the session had started. She thought it looked good, but she was getting a little tired of all the work entailed.
“It was pretty good. I mean, Therese showed up, even though she wasn’t supposed to be there, and she made a scene, as usual. But, it could have been a lot worse.”
Sarah glanced over sympathetically.
“Therese still does that, huh? Doesn’t she ever get tired of scaring your boyfriends off?”
“Did she?”
Emily turned to Margot, who was filling the sink while watching her in the mirror, surprised that she asked anything at all. She thought that she and Margot got along fine, for two people who barely ever spoke to each other, but she didn’t think she’d ever actually shown any interest in her personal life before. Margot was looking at her expectantly, so Emily couldn’t risk peaking at her halo to try and figure out her motivation.
“Did she what?”
“Did she scare off Alex?” Margot asked, putting one hand in the water briefly to check the temperature. “Or is he your boyfriend now?”
The curler in Emily’s fingers at that moment slipped from her hand and clattered off the counter and onto the ground. Sarah picked it up for her, and then set it down next to the rest of Emily’s toiletries on the counter.
“Well,” Emily stalled, trying to reason out some kind of answer, “not exactly. She didn’t seem to scare Alex off, though it was a little bit weird after she left. And no, Alex isn’t my boyfriend. We don’t even know each other that well, yet. But,” Emily said slowly, enjoying saying it out loud, even if it wasn’t
exactly the whole truth, “well, we are kind of seeing each other.”
And it wasn’t a lie, not completely. Alex had agreed, after all, to see her again, and to spend more time with her. It didn’t matter that she’d told him that it would help her convince the Hegemony that she was doing her job, and therefore make them leave both of them alone. That was a detail, and if it was an unpleasant detail, it was also a minor one. The important thing, she reminded herself, was that she had made progress.
“Really? That’s awesome,” Sarah enthused, grabbing Emily’s shoulder and squealing. “I was worried for you. He seems a little, uh, shy. Spacey, too.”
“He is,” Emily agreed cheerfully. “I mean, I don’t know that much about him, but given how he got here, and what it must be like, with everyone knowing who is and all, I don’t think it’s too surprising that he’s a little nervous. It’s okay. It’s even cute, sort of.”
Margot looked up from the towel she was using to dry her face.
“Do you like him?”
The vampire’s voice was flat and devoid of interest. Emily wanted badly to take a quick look at her halo, to look for the reassuring silver flash of curiosity, but she was a little intimidated by Margot, and decided not to, afraid that she might notice.
“Maybe. I think that I might,” Emily answered, being as upbeat as possible while still telling the truth.
“Did he spend the night?”
Sarah nudged Emily, her eyes sparkling.
Emily’s pride and pleasure at being the center of attention wavered.
“No,” she admitted reluctantly, trying very hard to put Alex’s confession of inexperience and the bizarre story about his family out of her mind, as thinking about it made her feel weirdly sweaty and nervous. “I was kind of upset. Therese and I got into a fight, and I didn’t want to be there when she came back, so we came back up to campus.”
Sarah looked puzzled.
“But, I thought that your plan was…”
“It was,” Emily acknowledged, freeing her hair from the last of the curlers, and then frowning at her reflection in the mirror like it had done something to her. “But, the mood was all wrong, and anyway, I don’t want him to think that I’m… oh, I don’t know. Desperate or something. I wanted it to be, you know, good.”
Sarah’s hair brushing became more agitated.
“Are you sure about that? Don’t get me wrong, but you need this to work, right?”
“Well, yes,” Emily said, feeling her cheeks burn, unable to look up from her lap. “But… well, I’m not… not like that.”
“Come on. I know perfectly well what you’re like,” Sarah said, sounding a bit exasperated. “Remember that boy at the start of last session, what was his name? Kurt something? He followed you around for like two months before he finally gave up on you because he thought you weren’t interested, and I know you liked him. You have a lot of good points, Emily, but being assertive isn’t exactly one of them. Did you even let Alex kiss you?”
“He didn’t, uh, he didn’t try,” Emily said, trying not to sound discouraged or pathetic. “Actually. I thought he would. I was standing right there. I would have let him.”
“He is shy,” Margot observed, carefully squeezing toothpaste onto her toothbrush.
“Look, don’t take this the wrong way,” Sarah said carefully. “I know that this is a weird situation. And I know that you like to take these things slow. But, you have factor the rest of the world into your thinking, Emily. This isn’t just some boy you’re crushing on; he’s a strategic asset for the cartels to fight over. Anastasia and the rest of them are serious about recruiting this kid, you know?”
“I know,” Emily acknowledged quietly.
“And just because you want to wait for the right time and make sure that you have feelings for each other and everything is special, that doesn’t mean that some other girl won’t hop right into bed with him, you know? It’s probably not going to be roses and candlelight dinners.”
Sarah looked at her with what Emily pretended wasn’t a trace of pity. Sarah was her friend, Emily reminded herself firmly, and she was trying to help.
“He’s a guy, Emily. You know how guys are.”
“I know,” Emily acknowledged, in a steadily meeker voice.
“I’m not saying you have to throw yourself at him, but if he thinks you're never going to put out, some bitch is going to steal him from you. I’m not trying to be hard on you,” Sarah said firmly. “That's how it is, hon. You do know that, right?”
“Yes,” Emily said, fighting off a looming wave of self-pity.
“There are a bunch of other Hegemony girls who are waiting for you to fail so they can take your place. And there is nothing that Anastasia will not do to get what she wants,” Sarah said urgently, putting one hand on Emily’s shoulder. “She will have no trouble whatsoever finding someone who will do whatever it takes to get Alex to join the Black Sun, if Anastasia decides that’s the way she wants to handle it.”
“Why do you think Anastasia hasn’t done that?” Margot asked, only somewhat intelligible through the toothpaste.
It was always weird to watch Margot brush her teeth, because it was the only time Emily could actually see her oversized, pointed canines. Not that she was scared of Margot or vampires in general; well, not very afraid. But her teeth were the starkest reminder of how very different Margot was.
“No idea,” Sarah admitted. “You’d know better than I would — you still work for her sometimes, right, Margot? I don’t try and out-think cousin Ana, I’m just glad my branch of the family stayed with the Hegemony. She probably has some other plan for Alex. But that doesn’t change what I’m saying. Even if Anastasia doesn’t interfere, somebody else will. You know how many power-hungry bitches there are here at the Academy? You do your usual good-girl routine, Emily, and you’re going to get lost in the shuffle.”
“I know. I know you’re right,” Emily said, doing her best not to sound miserable and failing. “But, I already screwed up my chance. I don’t know when I can get the house to myself again, and I don’t know if he’d even come over again…”
Sarah looked stricken, and patted her on the shoulder sympathetically. For a moment, she said nothing, and then she suddenly cried out excitedly.
“Of course!” She grabbed hold of Emily’s shoulders as if she was going to shake her. “I’ve got it. A perfect opportunity!”
“What?”
“Hey, Margot, when does Alex start that class with Mitsuru? You know, the bad one?” Sarah asked, nodding excitedly as she spoke. “Combat-whatever-it’s-called?”
Margot’s response was made unintelligible by toothpaste, and they had to wait until she had a chance to rinse out her mouth before they could hear the answer.
“You mean the Program,” she said curtly, looking, to Emily’s eyes, unhappy about something. “And he starts this week.”
“Perfect!” Sarah enthused. “So what you do is, on his first day, you get the proctor to let you into his room while he’s in class, right? So you are waiting for him when he gets out. Say you were worried about him, Alex will like that. His proctor is Li, so it won’t be any big deal getting him to let you in. Anyway, I hear that class is pretty fucked up, especially at first. Don’t you think he might want some company after, Margot?”
“Yes,” Margot admitted, speaking a little too loudly, her flat voice echoing throughout the tiled bathroom. “It would be a good idea for someone to be there for him. It is difficult for many people at first, emotionally.”
“But if it’s in the dorms,” Emily said slowly, “and we…”
“Right!” Sarah crowed. “So you can’t, so you don’t have to, but you don’t come off like a prude either. He’ll know about the dorm rules, so he won’t expect you to do anything. It’s perfect, right?”
“I guess so,” Emily said, thinking it through, and wondering if Sarah might be right. “I mean, it’s not like I’d get in trouble just for kissing him or something, right? And
even Margot said he shouldn’t be left alone…”
“No, he shouldn’t,” Margot said, again speaking more loudly than was necessary, gathering her things and heading for the door. Emily was too occupied with Sarah’s scheme to wonder much why she didn’t shower, even though it seemed like she’d planned on it. “Someone should definitely be there.”
It was cold in the bathroom, and Eerie had started trembling long before Sarah and Emily finished chatting and gossiping and finally left. She’d been standing in one of the shower enclosures, naked except for the bath towel she was partially wrapped in, shivering in silence since Emily arrived, somehow unable to face the girl that Alex had gone home with. Eerie stayed completely motionless until they left, except for her chattering teeth. She didn’t even dare reach for her bathrobe, afraid that they would hear her open the shower door to reach for it. Eerie waited until she was certain that they were gone, and then she turned on the water as hot as she could stand. She was grateful for the warmth pouring down her back, but it was a while longer before she stopped trembling.
“I’m not trying to force you into making up your mind. I understand that this is a difficult decision.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t want you to feel like we are talking you into anything.”
“You aren’t.”
“Good.” The kid composed himself and looked as if he was about to continue on, then the other kid, the quiet one nudged him. “Ah, right. Then, if it is alright with you, can I move on to the substance of our visit?”
Alex wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t. Alex toyed with idea of throwing a punch at the kid, what’s-his-name, Nathan something. But, he knew that even if he didn’t hurt him, that Michael would never let him get away with it.
“You mean you didn’t come down here to hold the bag for me?” Alex asked, gesturing with one gloved hand at the water-filled punching bag that Nathan was holding cautiously, almost fearfully.
“Err, no. Well, not wholly,” Nathan said seriously. Alex had thus far seen no evidence that Nathan had even a shred of a sense of humor. “I am here as a representative of the Drava Cartel, and Frederick is here as a representative of the Gehrig-Moore Cartel. Our cartels are members of an alliance known as the…”
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