The Awakening of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  He started walking backwards toward the door. “Check the manual on how to do that. Just in case I don't see you again tonight, stay here in the break room, so that anyone here can answer your questions, or accompany you, if needed. After a few days you’ll get comfortable with the procedure, and it won’t be necessary for you to report in here, if you'd rather not. You will be able to answer calls from anywhere, as long as you keep mobile.”

  I nodded and watched him go. The break room was ominously silent in his absence. Ok, practice time.

  I put the eraser on the floor, aimed the tablet at it, took a deep breath, and punched the button.

  A bolt of red flew out and connected with the eraser. BAM. A toad croaked in its place. I stared, wide-eyed as it gave another croak, then a small, uncoordinated hop. It adjusted, then gave a steadier hop.

  I grabbed another eraser.

  I had zapped seven erasers, before I realized my toad population was getting out of control, and I didn't know how to turn them back. The first toad managed to make it out the door and another two wedged themselves under the large refrigerator box, before I figured out that aiming the tablet and double-tapping the red button turned toad four back into an eraser. I zeroed in on toads five, six, and seven in a display of shooting around tables that pumped the same primal urge paintball produced. Christian would love this.

  “Definitely,” he said.

  “Eat them! Eat them, legs and all!”

  The refrigerator toads were hunkered down, so I looked for the lone escapee. It had only been about two minutes, but the long corridor was empty and the hallway toad was long gone. Concerning. I had no idea what happened to them if they were left magicked.

  I tried to coax the refrigerator toads out with some lettuce, but they refused to budge. I tried zapping one, but it seemed that the more time they spent as toads, the smarter they became. It dodged left on the first zap, then right on the second. Toad two taunted me by doing a cartwheel to escape the last blast.

  Two uniformed students entered the room, while my butt was raised to the heavens and my face was pressed to the floor.

  My cheek turned hot against the cold tile. The toads smirked at me. Well, I'd kind of feel bad zapping them at this point, so I gave a wave of defeat and hoisted myself off the floor.

  The girls snickered and exchanged glances. I wondered if it was the “newbie” type of glance or the “new troublemaker” type.

  “I just completed a three day stint on duty, do you know why we are being called in?” one girl asked the other after staring at my hair, then dismissing me completely. I tried not to touch the strands in response. There was nothing I could do about the black magic backlash right now. If I didn't work off the punishment or transfer it to someone else, another worse punishment would simply replace it.

  “Level Four somewhere in the Midlands. And we need teams of four to enter.”

  Seems I had gotten out of there just in time.

  “Ugh.” The other girl looked down at her bubblegum pink tablet. “Source and aspects are clouded, as usual. I hate going there. They should just pave those levels.”

  “Right. Some of those creatures don't exist outside of the Fourth Layer. Some of that magic can't be found anywhere but in the Fifth. The research professors would have a cow. Besides, the whole mountain would probably explode. Just in case you are feeling extra slow—that means you would too.”

  Two more students joined, giving them a group of four, and they left, cursing.

  I fiddled with my tablet, less keen on turning more toads until I could figure out what happened to them. I decided to scan the manual instead. The tablet was quite ingenious. And using it was a little like using a First Layer tablet computer. Learning how to maneuver through the screens was quick—especially for someone who lacked basic survival skills and had far too much curiosity. Click, click, click, went my fingers. I only got zapped twice, and luckily they were electric zaps instead of amphibious ones. I figured out how to change my first name from Florence to Ren in the student and administration directory. I considered making my last name Brown to throw off Marsgrove.

  More people came through the room. They’d look at me, snicker, then their tablets would issue alerts. Maybe I'd just be the local sideshow here. I could only hope.

  My tablet bleeped before I got the full “p” out of hope. Then bleeped again. I took a deep breath, then activated the map spell to track the calls.

  Before long I had two Level One calls under my belt—a student misusing a homework spell and another who had melted a magical book. The calls were similar to my own lower level offenses, but I was on the other end, doling out the punishments. Both offenders had looked highly amused while I had hemmed and hawed, trying to discern appropriate punishments.

  My third bleep was a whopper on the meter—a Level Three. Technically, Isaiah had said I wasn’t supposed to receive those the first night. As I trudged to the sixth floor of Dorm One, two more bleeps registered on my tablet. Judging by the number of calls I had already received, and the number of uniformed students in groups of four running down the sidewalks and through the arches outside, something big was happening. I keenly hoped they didn't destroy my secret lab in the pandemonium.

  I checked the two newest calls on the tablet display—one Level Two and one Level One. I continued on my course to the Level Three, since it still registered as the most urgent.

  It was suddenly apparent why sometimes a Justice Squad member showed up right after I committed an offense, and at other times it would take twenty minutes.

  I stopped in front of room one hundred sixty-nine. “I69” was on the door—the number one having been changed into the letter “I.” If the occupant had picked this room himself based on humor value, I was probably going to find some kid on the other side that had tried to turn a toad into a hot date and ended up with a troll.

  Sighing, I knocked on the door, tablet in hand. I didn't know what I'd do if there was a troll on the other side. Zap him with my tablet, I guess, and wonder what a troll toad would do. Which made me think of the Troll Bell ritual referenced in one of the necromancy texts. It was supposed to secure a spirit to a bridge of the caster's specification. The bridge, luckily, was metaphorical.

  But I still had to find the bells and I had assiduously avoided trolls in the Midlands since my first incident with one.

  Maybe a troll toad could lend me some. Far better to try that ritual next than the ones involving goats and guts the Black Grimoire advocated. Or the five human sacrifices referenced in the book Bob Jones Studies the Dead—You Can Too!

  I knocked again.

  I could hear someone moving around inside, but I had to knock three more times before the door opened. I was already irritated, but the lazy smile that greeted me upped the level.

  “Forgive me for taking so long,” drawled the tall boy who Professor Stevens had proclaimed the bane of her existence. “If I had known new meat was on the other side, I would have moved more quickly.”

  His dark hair was too long in the front and the back, and he was extremely good looking in that charmingly sordid and insouciant “I buy the best designer drugs and use them frequently” way that old money kids sometimes had.

  I was supposed to read him the riot act on getting a Level Three, but the first thing out of my mouth was, “You stole my firesnake skin.”

  “That was you?” He looked me over, tall gaze resting on the tablet in my hands, my ugly green hair, then my lack of uniform. “I used it well.”

  “You stole it.”

  “Larceny is one of my many faults.” His smile didn't reach his surprisingly sharp eyes. “But I am being remiss as a host. Welcome to the club.”

  I darted my gaze between creepy, hot thief and making sure my exits were clear. “We're in your dorm.” I said gently, irritation folding beneath forced calm. I had found that was the best option with people on a high.

  He laughed. Even that was dark, sparkling, and edged. False, like black cham
pagne. “Exquisitely new.”

  I hadn't thought to ask, but I wondered if I should be on the lookout for creature-blooded students. It would just round out my day to have dark and sparkly here be an incubus or vampire or, I don't know, some kind of soul-sucking demon.

  “There are demon wards on campus and creature-blooded students attend schools in the Fourth Layer with the rest of the hybrids. I'm surprised you don't know that.” He lazily twined a long dark ribbon around his finger, piercing eyes at odds with his seductive smile.

  Great. Either he had read my mind, or I had just voiced my thoughts out loud. Odds were good on the Ren scale of tiredness and stupidity today that it was the latter. I expected Christian to make a comment, but he was silent.

  I sighed. “Sorry about the demon comment. Listen, I'm here because the meter registered a medium level of bloodshed in this quadrant.”

  “Yes. That was me.” He was still smirking down at me, lids low over his eyes.

  “You aren't supposed to be practicing blood magic outside of class.”

  “That's correct.”

  “I have to write you up.”

  “If you must.”

  I checked my tablet. This job sucked. Not that I was looking to make friends with the guy who stole my first firesnake skin, but what better way to make everyone on campus hate me, while simultaneously showing all and sundry that I didn't know some of the basic magics that other mages threw around likes shallow smiles.

  And all while having a really bad hair day.

  “Ok, I have the truth spell activated for writing in this thing. That means if you tell me your name is Old MacDonald, and I write it down, it will reach out and zap you. Which, frankly, I don't know if that means you get electrocuted or toadified, so best just to be honest, ok?”

  “What if my name is Old MacDonald?”

  “Then we go to question number two. Listen, I have a feeling you've done this before, so if—”

  “What did you do?”

  Surprised, I looked up. “What?”

  “What did you do to get community service?”

  “How do you know I'm not a volunteer?” I hedged.

  “It's obvious, and I know everyone on the squad.”

  I'll just bet he did. The guy looked and acted like he did something like this every night. And even though I was here to write him what probably amounted to his one hundredth magical ticket, he wasn't getting expelled.

  “Do you pay off the officials?”

  I wondered if the ticket enchanting magic would be satisfied with monetary payment for individual offenses. I doubted it. That seemed like cheating.

  The left side of his mouth tightly lifted. “Dear Daddy makes sure I stay enrolled.”

  I nodded and fiddled with my tablet. “So...what's your poison here? I'm betting you already have something in mind for punishment.” Probably something like writing I will not relieve five more girls of their virginity then toss them to the curb the next morning a thousand times. In blood.

  “I want to know what you did first.”

  I folded my hands over the ticket tablet. “I respectfully decline your inquiry.”

  He looked more interested, and the ribbon shivered in the air for a moment, seemingly of its own volition. “I simply must know how you've joined the club.”

  Ah. His reference finally clicked, as well as the amused looks on the faces of my first two cases. I had realized I was the only one not in uniform in the break room, and it looked like that was a dead giveaway for repeat offenders.

  “I get only members of the volunteer squad or the select club, of which you are now assuredly a part.” He smirked. “The boring offenders don't go out on matters of true interest. But if you landed me...well, I don't register on the single night service roster. Not even on an exceptional night.”

  “I have more than one night to serve,” I confirmed. I was likely going to run into this guy again during my two hundred hours. In fact, I'd probably run into him two hundred more times. Might as well be polite. “But the tale is quite boring.”

  “I am sure it isn’t. So, either assuage my curiosity out here, or come in and do so over a drink.” He smirked again. “It's fresh.”

  I thought about what the meter had read. “Right. Listen—” I checked the tablet just to make sure that the name I had heard uttered by the blond boy who had bought my firesnake and the girls in the library definitely belonged to the guy in front of me. If the offender took too long to answer, the name popped up.

  Yup.

  “Constantine Leandred, I'm charmed and all, but I have two more bleeps after you.”

  The tablets were only supposed to register things directly related to the incidents—and only those mages who had been tagged as the offending parties—but still, the idea that these devices could be used for other things...well, it was disturbing. And it furthered the realization that I had basically signed away a decent number of rights—or Marsgrove had signed them away for me—in order to enroll in this school.

  “A three bleep night. I'm enthralled. And devastated that you are passing me over so quickly.”

  He looked anything but devastated. The lovesick girl in the library had wanted to bespell this guy to love her back? I nearly snorted. He probably had a list of conquests as long as his designer clad legs. Slick and cool and slippery. The kind of guy in the movies who left a girl in the morning with nothing other the crushed feeling that she had been used hard.

  And I wasn't attracted to him. I smiled, pleased with myself. An image of arrogant Alexander Dare without his shirt on flashed through my head.

  Right. Perhaps I simply had my stupid crush quota already filled.

  “Then you should join the squad, Mr. Leandred. I could let them know you are interested.”

  He leaned languorously against the jamb, like a panther resting. “Tut, tut, new meat. What did you do? Don't make me strip it out of you.”

  I tilted my head down toward my tablet, trying to decided what to say. I needed to figure out how to channel Stevens. No one messed with her.

  When I looked up Constantine's eyes were narrowed. It gave him a decidedly more dangerous look, his languid posture turning predatory. “You are Stevens's new student.” He said it as if it was the crime I had committed. “The other day in her personal lab—that was you. I saw you. How did you get service?”

  I saw you, too, being a pain and a thief, I wanted to say.

  “I accidentally blew up the lab we had been working in.” I admitted, trying to make it sound as dull and non-newsworthy as I could. Stupid truth spells that were attached to the tablet made lying difficult and painful. I remembered Peters getting zapped, and what that had felt like on my end—so I had made sure to read up on it in the manual. You could make fibbing jokes only as long as you made it clear you were kidding. Who thought it was a good idea to send investigators out on criminal jobs and stop them from lying? “There. Now tit for tat, Mr. Tut-tut. What do you want to do about your punishment.”

  But Constantine’s posture and magic now mirrored what his eyes had hinted from the beginning—a sharp and deadly focus threaded through his external insouciance. “You're feral. Newly magicked.” The black ribbon jumped in agitation.

  And he was decidedly Old Magic. Everything about him screamed wealth, privilege, and youthful waste.

  “I can feel how feral you are. Yet Stevens took you on.”

  “I'm a transfer student.” Curses looped in my brain. Feel it? He had to be lying or guessing. I had looked it up and normal mages couldn't just tell someone was new. “Now, pony up your punishment, or I'll choose for you.”

  A nice stint gathering firesnake skins was just what the doctor was prescribing. And maybe I'd hide behind a tree, at the ready to grab his first one.

  “One of the art complexes exploded and an unbelievable rumor said that a chunk of the art vault landed in the Third Layer.” His smile pulled wide, but his caramel-colored eyes were dark. “A rumor everyone completely dismisses,
of course. As that would be...disturbing.”

  All of my danger alarms started ringing. Christian was suddenly yelling obscenities in my head along with his alter ego.

  “So many rumors,” Constantine said, pulling a finger along the edge of the door, eyes never leaving contact with mine. “I wonder how many apply to you?”

  “Mmhmm.” I feigned nonchalance. “And you are about to pull firesnake duty.” The tablet dinged in my hand. Yes! The punishment would be accepted. I needed to get out of here.

  “I will thoroughly clean the chemistry lab and prep all level one potions three times next week, by my magic I so do vow,” he said, voice languid, but with an underlying intensity that had been missing before.

  The tablet dinged and the magic wound around us, testing, then seeped back down. The tablet vibrated then lay silent.

  I wouldn't get my firesnake retribution, but whatever, I was out of here. Two more calls, then I would go work off some nervous energy with Draeger.

  “There hasn't been a newly feral student at the Academy in years.”

  “That's nice.” I checked my pockets, as I backed away.

  “And one with artistic aspirations who attracts the notice of someone like Stevens...you've been contacted already, I'm sure.”

  I looked at him suspiciously—more suspiciously—and stopped patting my pockets. “What?”

  Contacted? Like Raphael Verisetti and whatever terrorist organization he worked for? How would this guy know?

  Constantine Leandred smiled dangerously, as if I had answered affirmatively. “Watch your back, new meat. I'll be seeing you again.” He shut the door.

  I gripped the tablet in my hands. Miss Angelie's School for Girls was sounding better all the time.

  ~*~

  I knocked on the door of my next call and scrolled the tablet a little more thoroughly this time, castigating myself as I did. Should have done this with Constantine Leandred. I was such an idiot. I needed to be more far more paranoid.